When you pay ClimateCare for emission reductions, your money is invested in projects around the world that reduce greenhouse gases. All our projects undergo robust design, monitoring and verification processes so that you can be confident that the emission reductions are made. Read our ClimateCare promise.

The Five Project Stages

1. Project Sourcing
   We partner with organisations around the world to develop a range of project types in suitable geographical locations. These can be businesses, NGOs or community groups.
2. Additionality Analysis
   We will only fund a project if we can be confident that it would not have gone ahead without carbon finance (i.e. income from selling the emission reductions).
3. The Design and Verification Project Cycle
   Our projects follow a cycle of design, monitoring and independent verification to provide independent assessment and audit of the emission reductions delivered.
4. Compliance with an industry standard
   All projects are accredited to an internationally recognised and rigorous emission reduction standard.
5. Retire offsets
   All emission reductions are retired against our liability.

1. Project Sourcing

The ClimateCare team has been developing and sourcing emission reduction projects since 1997. Over this time we have built up an extensive network of contacts across the worlds of business, government and the NGO community through whom we source, fund and manage projects.

This expertise in developing projects, including understanding the key engineering issues, the economics and the local social and environmental impacts, means that our partners can have confidence in our ability to both source and broker projects on their behalf.

See our project case stories for examples.

Project Types

ClimateCare’s focus is on projects that reduce emissions of greenhouse gases produced by industry and other human activity. Examples of project types that we fund are listed below. The list is not comprehensive and we are continually looking for innovative ways to reduce emissions.

• Renewable Electricity - Wind Power, Hydro Power (run of river, not large-scale hydro), Solar power, Sustainably grown biomass, Agricultural residues (crop and animal waste)
• Renewable Heat - Sustainably grown biomass, Agricultural residues (crop and animal waste)
• Energy Efficiency - Electrical efficiency, Heating efficiency, Efficient cooking
• Methane - Projects that avoid the production of methane and projects that destroy methane through flaring or electricity generation
• Reforestation – on request

Project Location

We make sure that the reductions we fund are not ‘double counted’ by both our customers and governments meeting their Kyoto targets. To avoid this, Climate Care will not fund projects in countries that have binding targets under the Kyoto Protocol (i.e. Developed Countries that have ratified the Protocol) during the period when they have legally binding targets (2008-12), unless it can be assured that the emission reductions can be retired from the national account.

The majority of our projects are located in the developing world, and can be viewed on our project map.

2. Additionality

It is important that your payment results in emission reductions that would not have happened without your intervention. For each project, ClimateCare must determine that its funding is instrumental to its going ahead. This concept is known in the carbon market as ‘additionality’.

Every project undergoes an additionality assessment. For this ClimateCare uses the guidelines published by the United Nations for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, which publishes sets of additionality tests for large and small scale projects.

3. The Design & Verification Project Cycle

All of our projects undergo a process of robust methodology design, validation and verification, as set down in the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) guidelines.

Every project has to be designed according to a template or ‘methodology’ as approved by a recognised industry standard. Organisations can design and submit methodologies for new types of project, and once they are approved they are publicly available for other project developers to use when designing specific projects.

For specific projects there are two stages in the project cycle that provide independent assessment and audit of project design and emission reductions.

Phase One

For every ClimateCare project a Project Design Document (PDD) is completed that follows the format proscribed by the CDM and sets out, amongst other things:

• Description of the project.
• Projected emissions occurring in absence of project (baseline methodology).
• Demonstration of how GHG emissions are reduced by the project below what would otherwise occur (additionality).
• Calculation of projected reductions in GHG emissions (methodology).
• Method of monitoring actual GHG emission reductions (monitoring methodology).
• Projected impact on sustainable development.

This document is reviewed by ClimateCare and then also submitted to an independent third party to validate the contents.

We endeavour to use a Designated Operational Entity (DOE), an independent UN approved organisation designed to act as auditors on CDM projects. This is the case for over 99% of the tonnes produced by our projects.

Phase Two

Once the Project Design Document has been validated and approved, the second phase begins. This involves the longer term monitoring of the project, which is when the difference between the baseline emissions and actual emission reductions is measured.

Our project partners keep detailed records (as per the requirements of the PDD) for monitoring. The DOE confirms that the emission reductions were delivered, the monitoring was carried out correctly and methodology for calculating credits correctly applied.

Only when this report has been verified do we retire the emission reductions against our liabilities.

4. Compliance with an industry standard

Even before rigorous project standards were developed in the market ClimateCare has always applied strong project principles. Now, the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism has set rigorous standards for project validation and verification and credible project standards for voluntary emissions reductions have been launched.

We are developing projects to comply with such highly regarded standards including: CDM, Gold Standard CDM, Gold Standard VER, Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and VER+. Since 2007 all new projects are designed for accreditation to one of these or other high quality standards.

5. Retirement of Emission Reductions

Once emission reductions are made through our projects, they are retired so they cannot be double-sold. Unlike the compliance market, there is currently no single organisation controlling the retirement of credits in the voluntary market.

To ensure a similar level of assurance can be provided for voluntary market credits (VERs), the standards ClimateCare support are in the process of registry development. These are expected to be operational during 2008. All relevant credits will be retired into these external registries as soon as possible.

ClimateCare has also developed a project database, which will provide high quality access to project information to provide greater transparency and assurance. It will internally retire credits and will be linked to the registries to retire credits formally.