In October 2021, the Commons team vetted over 20 and selected 3 new carbon removal providers to add to Commons Offset Portfolio.

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Every few months, our team of experts evaluates new offset providers to ensure we are sourcing the best offsets on the market for the Commons community to support. We’re offset skeptics ourselves, so we know they’re not all created equal. Just like you wouldn’t put all your money into one stock, we your whole offset into a single project. We curate a portfolio of providers that not only reduce and remove carbon, but also prioritize innovation, scalability, and environmental justice. Read more about how we select offsets here.

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This time, we evaluated 20 new providers and picked 3 new ones to include in the portfolio: Running Tide, NCX, and Grassroots Carbon. Our providers protect and restore forests, store carbon in soil through regenerative agriculture techniques, support open ocean kelp farming to permanently store carbon in seaweed, and even sequester carbon deep underground in the form of carbon-rich bio-oils. See our detailed project evaluations here.

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Oceans and their wildlife are massive carbon sinks. Support novel approaches that use kelp to permanently store carbon. Read about Running Tide.

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Directly support landowners to protect old-growth forests, a critical global carbon sink. Read about NCX.

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Empower farmers with rigorous approaches to measure carbon they restore in soil through regenerative agricultural practices. Read about Grassroots Carbon.

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The Commons team developed a portfolio-based offsetting strategy because there’s no silver bullet to solve the climate crisis.

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It’s possible to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis if we act quickly to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The United Nations’ IPCC 2018 Special Report, however, made clear that no single climate solution - be it forestry, batteries, green buildings, or direct air capture - will be enough to get us there.

We need a broad arsenal of climate solutions, and we need them ASAP. Over the next 30 years, the global community needs to balance investments in cost-efficient solutions that avoid, reduce, or remove carbon now (e.g. clean cookstoves, infrastructure, forestry, soil) with longer-term, pricier solutions that store and sequester carbon permanently (e.g. direct air capture, biomass carbon removal and storage). 

The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Offsetting, released in September 2020, present a framework for how to think about supporting carbon reduction now, while intentionally shifting to carbon removal with long-lived storage by mid-century. The Principles suggest that supporting a portfolio of projects that balances carbon reduction and removal types is the best way to achieve this. Avoided or reduced emissions without storage tend to be the cheapest projects (e.g. clean cookstoves, renewable energy), while carbon removal with long-lived storage is currently the most expensive (e.g. direct air capture, mineralization).

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 Examples of each project type include: 

Now you can support the solutions we need most to achieve net zero by 2050.

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We are excited to introduce the Commons Carbon Portfolio, which allows you to buy into a carefully blended selection of climate solutions that align with the Oxford Principles to get our world to net zero emissions by 2050. Our inaugural Carbon Portfolio, balanced across forestry, soil, and bio-oil injection, supports meaningful carbon removal at an overall price of $25 per ton (including a 17% Commons fee for sourcing, evaluating, and monitoring projects). Over time, Commons will update our portfolio to achieve a balance that continues to shift toward long-lived storage.

Companies at the forefront of carbon removal investments, like Microsoft and Shopify, have used a similar approach to frame their large-scale carbon removal purchases and bought into many of the same projects as Commons did. For the first time, The Commons Carbon Portfolio makes this high-impact approach to offsetting available to regular people, by aggregating demand and doing the same kind of in-depth research and monitoring that larger companies do, on behalf of all of us. 

A focus on carbon removal, aligned with the Oxford Offsetting Principles.

Most carbon offsets available today are exclusively avoided or reduced emissions - offsets from clean cookstoves, renewable energy, and some forestry protection projects, for instance. These projects are critical but not sufficient to achieve the Paris Agreement’s objective to limit global average temperature rise “to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”  Each project we selected for the inaugural Carbon Portfolio includes a carbon removal component, and the forestry projects also include a reduction component.

Vetted, high-integrity projects.

The carbon credit market is not regulated, and the market is flooded with poor-quality credits from badly-managed projects. As offset skeptics ourselves, we’ve meticulously researched and balanced our projects. To be certain about the integrity of the projects, we’ve called up developers, pored over reports, and cross-checked verifiers. The truth is - certifications like Gold Standard and Verra are a good starting point, but they’re nowhere near enough. 

Transparent and efficient supply chain.

Commons wants to support the creation of an efficient and transparent market for offsets. To do so, Commons aims to reduce the dilution of our users’ dollars by reducing the amount of middlemen involved in the carbon offset supply chain. We have also demanded a high degree of information and transparency from our offset providers. We’ve had multiple phone calls with each provider we partnered with, and conducted thorough research and consulted experts to ensure the carbon removals are backed by evidence and analysis. Looking forward, we’ll continue to be in close touch with our offset partners to provide ongoing monitoring and validation, and will not hesitate to remove projects from the Carbon Portfolio if they are not well-managed.

Support for climate justice and co-benefits.

Commons is committed to building a future in which all life can thrive. We aim to support offset projects that not only reduce or remove carbon, but also actively support justice, equity, and other co-benefits in order to ensure that they are building a more sustainable and equitable future. We’ve outlined more details on our evaluation and selection of carbon offset projects here.

Our offsetting approach complements complement behavior change, and accelerates the transition to a sustainable future.

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The best way to move to a low-carbon future is to build a society that uses less fossil fuels. It is critical that we prioritize cutting our own emissions wherever we can. Changing our own lifestyles - and the products and services we spend our money on - is an important signal that we demand cleaner options. Commons helps people shift to more sustainable choices, and to benchmark against and encourage our peers and communities to do the same.

However, for as long as we live in a fossil-fueled society, there will always be a portion of emissions that we cannot reduce on our own. Even the most committed of us will have a carbon footprint. Paying for high-quality carbon reduction and removal can play an important role in creating demand for much-needed climate solutions. That’s why we created the Commons Carbon Portfolio: to support emissions reduction and removal beyond what we can achieve on our own.