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How do carbon offsets work, and why do some offsets fail to actually reduce carbon emissions? Overview of the Voluntary Carbon Market // BACK Summary In this document, we give a very brief overview of how carbon markets work, and why they may lead to supporting projects that do not reduce emissions. We also show why the stated purpose of offsets—to provide a verifiable reduction of a specific amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—is rarely attainable. But even if validating the exact amount of emissions reduction tied to a carbon credit is an unrealistic goal, purchasers can still direct their investments towards projects that are likely making some positive difference in the fight against climate change. For organizations that have the flexibility to make climate impact through charitable donations as opposed to purchasing carbon credits, we suggest donating to Giving Green’s recommended US policy organizations , as we believe that these policy organizations have more expected impact than even the best of carbon offsets or removals. This report was lightly updated in November 2022. The prior version of this report was published in October 2021. We may do a more detailed investigation of this area in the future. Carbon Markets and the Certification Process Types of carbon markets Let’s start with some definitions. The carbon market is generally split into two parts. The compliance market is for offsets associated with international pacts such as the Kyoto accords and national or regional cap and trade systems (such as the California Cap-and-Trade Program). These frameworks each have their own rules for certifying offsets. The other part is the voluntary market , which provides offsets for individuals and businesses to purchase on their own accord. This might be for an individual looking to offset their flight, or for businesses looking to brand themselves as “carbon neutral.” The vast majority of the demand for offsets comes from businesses. We focus on the voluntary carbon market in this analysis, though many of the conclusions also hold for the compliance market. In the voluntary market, there are no set rules for who can establish and sell offsets: any project developer can sell an offset as long as they can find a buyer. However, in practice, the vast majority of offsets that change hands in this market are validated by an established certification body. These certification bodies are supposed to provide certainty to offset purchasers that the offsets are actually representing avoided emissions. One certification option is the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism, which was established to certify international offsets to be used under the Kyoto Protocol, but now also provides certifications to the voluntary offset market. However, CDM projects are almost exclusively associated with compliance markets. According to Allied Offsets , the largest certification providers by number of listed projects as of September 2021 are Gold Standard (2,218 projects), Verified Carbon Standard (2,132), Climate Action Reserve (652), and American Carbon Registry (484). An analysis in April 2021 by Carbon Direct found that offset projects across these registries represent 1.1 billion tons of CO2 that is claimed to be avoided, reduced, or removed. The recent flurry of net-zero commitments in the past few years across industries has fueled newfound interest in carbon markets. McKinsey found that the number of corporate net-zero commitments doubled between 2019 and 2020 and estimates that the demand for carbon credits could increase by a factor of 15 by 2030, leading to a total carbon credit market value of more than $50 billion. The growing interest in carbon offsets has stimulated a number of institutions to improve the integrity of carbon markets and better define what role they have in a net-zero world. The Science-based Targets Initiative (SBTi) , a partnership between CDP, the United Nationals Global Compact, World Resources Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), helps companies establish science-based emissions reduction targets aligned with climate science to limit global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. SBTi’s target setting criteria does not allow for offsets to be counted as emissions reduction towards a company’s science-based targets. SBTi requires participating companies to reduce emissions within their own operations and value chains without the use of traditional offsets, with the potential exception of carbon removal to address hard-to-abate, residual emissions. On the other hand, a private-sector led initiative known as the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVCM) was established to scale up carbon markets and try to improve the integrity and functioning of these markets. The TSVCM has established working groups consisting of offset suppliers, verification bodies, NGOs, regulators, academia and other stakeholders to address gaps in voluntary markets relating to governance, legal frameworks, and carbon credit integrity. While the TSVCM is the largest effort to address these gaps, the initiative has been criticized for not going far enough in addressing the many quality issues inherent in today’s carbon offsets. For instance, critics have noted that they are attempting to commoditize a sector where carbon offset projects vary significantly across a variety of factors including additionality and permanence. Finally, Oxford University recently published a set of principles to help offset buyers understand what types of offsets are acceptable and under what conditions should they be used. The “Oxford Offsetting Principles” encourage buyers to prioritize cutting emissions and, when using offsets, to shift to carbon-removal-based offsets with long-lived storage over time. The Oxford principles attempt to stake a middle ground, recognizing a role for offsets in achieving net-zero targets while encouraging buyers to use offsets sparingly and providing guidance on how to support “net-zero aligned” projects. The carbon offset certification process How does the certification process work? Each of the certification organizations has pre-determined methodologies and calculations that project implementers need to use in order to validate that they provide real emission reductions. Applicants are required to provide certain inputs (i.e. the amount of power provided by a wind farm, etc.) along with justifications for these assumptions (frequently using some data they have gathered). These inputs go into a model, which determines how many credits they will receive for the project. Applicants also must provide evidence that the project would not be completed without the carbon credits, and that the emissions reductions are not being claimed twice. Although applications are typically done before a project is implemented, actual credits are generally not issued until after the emissions reduction is “verified,” which typically happens annually. The project implementer has to verify key assumptions of the model, and this verification is then “validated” by the certification agency. Only after completing this process is the project granted emission credits. The next step is for the project to sell these credits as offsets. Some projects have pre-committed buyers, set up through “Emissions Reduction Purchase Agreements” (ERPAs). Some projects sell their offsets directly to buyers through retail sites. For instance, Gold Standard provides a platform for certified projects to sell offsets directly to consumers on its website. However, the vast majority of offsets are instead transferred to brokers such as ClimateCare , South Pole , or CO2balance . These brokers work with clients (typically large corporations) to provide bespoke offset packages. Since brokers control the majority of the offset market, it can be hard for individuals to access the full spread of offset options. Some projects are not certified at all, and have circumvented registries altogether. This is largely due to the absence of a certification protocol for specific climate mitigation solutions, and is particularly applicable to non-forestry projects that claim to remove GHGs from the atmosphere. In some cases, the costs of thirdparty verification and certification may be too costly relative to the size of the project. In the absence of third-party verifiers, climate change research organizations like CarbonPlan conduct their own due diligence on carbon removal and carbon avoidance projects; CarbonPlan has made their findings available on a public database . However, these assessments are not often conducted at project sites and are based on information that providers make publicly available. Further, major carbon removal purchasers like Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify conduct their own due diligence on providers and have made project proposals publicly available, like this repository by Stripe on GitHub . While these assessments are a valuable source of information, it is important to note that much of this due diligence is based on publicly available information and claims made by project developers that have not been verified on site. The price of offsets is simply determined by supply and demand in the market, with sellers of offsets trying to get the best price they can receive while still making sales. This is an important note. Many people may assume that if a project cost, say, 1 million USD and prevented a million tons of CO2 emissions, then each offset would be priced at $1. But this is not true. The amount of revenue gained from offsets can be a small proportion of the costs of running a project, or can result in additional profits for revenue-generating projects. This can be problematic, as it is difficult to figure out how much of the emissions reduction of the project (if any) can really be attributed to the offsets. We discuss this further in the report. Reliability of Certified Offsets Criticism of certified offsets Even certified offsets have received a lot of criticism. For instance, the investigative journalism organization ProPublica looked into a myriad of forest conservation offset projects, and came to the following conclusion : “In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.” Additionally, a detailed assessment of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism determined that “CDM still has fundamental flaws in terms of overall environmental integrity” and that “85% of the projects covered in this analysis … have a low likelihood that emission reductions are additional and are not over-estimated.” Since the other certification agencies have based much of their certification protocol on CDM standards, this does not bode well for the industry as a whole and has real-world implications in addressing climate change. In the forestry sector, a recent analysis by ProPublica, MIT Technology Review, and CarbonPlan shed light on systematic over-crediting in almost 30% of carbon credits under California’s regulated carbon offset program representing 30 million tons of CO2e worth $410 million. CarbonPlan recently found a lack of rigorous standards to ensure good outcomes in an assessment of all of the soil carbon credit protocols developed by carbon registries and other institutions. A white paper by Compensate found that after analyzing 100 certified offset projects, 90% failed to meet their offsetting claims, were not permanent, or resulted in negative side-effects for local communities and ecosystems. These examples demonstrate that certified projects are not at all fool-proof, and purchasing poor-performing certified offsets in an effort to negate individual or corporate GHG emissions can even do more harm than good. Although the certification agencies play an extremely important role in identifying projects that have a plausible path to impact, they do not give enough certainty to allow us to recommend all certified offsets. There seem to be many opportunities to game the system, and we do not believe that certification alone is enough to guarantee that purchasing offsets will result in true emissions reductions, especially not of the stated magnitude. We conduct our own due diligence to find projects in which we are confident that the purchase of a credit yields climate benefit. Giving Green’s Approach to Recommending Offsets & Removals When does Giving Green recommend an offset or removal? In this section, we explain Giving Green’s approach to assessing carbon offset and removal projects and determining which ones to recommend. We are searching for projects where there is a direct, causal, and verifiable link between someone purchasing a carbon credit and a decreased amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. First, we look at the offset market sector by sector, to determine which sectors are most likely to provide reliable offsets. For sectors that we determine to be likely to contain high-quality offset projects, we then search through available projects and recommend those that meet our criteria. We rate projects using seven categories: mechanism, causality, cost, project-level additionality, marginal additionality, permanence, and co-benefits. Note that our project recommendations are not comprehensive—we have not assessed all projects in the market. (In fact, many projects do not have any publicly available information!) We have developed a systematic approach to assessing projects, and recommend the best ones we find. As our research continues, we expect to find more projects to recommend. A note to offset and removal providers: if you believe your project would meet our quality bar using the methods described below, please do feel free to reach out to us! For organizations that have the flexibility to make climate impact through charitable donations as opposed to purchasing carbon credits, we suggest donating to Giving Green’s recommended policy organizations, as we believe these have more expected impact than even the best of carbon offsets. Sector-level analysis We begin by conducting analyses at the sector level, since offset projects in the same sector tend to have similar strengths and weaknesses. For each sector we review (such as forestry, renewable energy, etc.), we produce a sector research report, in which we discuss the logic for offset projects in the sector, and determine whether we believe the underlying projects are likely to be reliable. We generally proceed by working through the certification process for an example offset project. In this process, we show what data must be provided by the project developers, and what assumptions are accepted by the certification agencies. We then discuss whether we believe these assumptions, consulting the literature to validate them. Based on this analysis, we determine if the sector appears to be promising for high-certainty projects. If so, we search for specific projects to recommend. If we determine that a sector is not promising, that does not necessarily mean that there are no high-quality projects in the sector. But given our limited research resources, we have simply concentrated our search for projects on what we consider to be the most promising sectors. We are open to finding high-quality projects in all sectors, and will consider projects in less promising sectors if they seem to be of exceptional quality. Project-level ratings After performing sector-level analyses, we then analyze and rate specific projects in promising sectors. We search for offsets to consider by assessing projects from open calls for proposals from major offset purchasers like Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify as well as reviewing publicly-available marketplaces selling offsets. We concentrate our search among projects that were easy to purchase online and where detailed information on the projects they support was available online. We rate offsets using seven main categories: mechanism, causality, project-level additionality, marginal additionality, permanence, cost, and co-benefits. These are summarized in the below table. For each project that we analyze, we rate each of these categories as ‘High’, ‘Medium’, or ‘Low’. In order to be recommended, projects need to make a compelling overall case that purchasing carbon credits reduces emissions. However, they do not have to score highly in all categories to do this. We elaborate on this in our explanations of each metric below. Mechanism Mechanism refers to the type of climate benefit a project offers. A project may offer “avoided emissions” or “carbon removal” climate benefits, and some projects can even offer both. Avoided emissions projects reduce or prevent additional GHGs from entering the atmosphere. For example, renewable energy projects or clean cookstove projects reduce GHG emissions when they are deployed instead of higher polluting alternatives. The climate benefit is that GHG emissions are reduced, or avoided altogether. More recently, projects that offer carbon removal benefits have gained in popularity. These projects claim to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it away over short or long time horizons. Afforestation or reforestation projects, or efforts to improve soil’s carbon storage capacity, are common nature-based carbon removal projects. Technological solutions like direct air capture (DAC), which uses machines to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it away in geologic formations, have just begun commercial deployment. We assess carbon removal projects more favorably than carbon avoidance projects because they remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere, which is better aligned with global net-zero goals that call for sharp emissions reductions where possible and the use of carbon removals for hard-to-abate emissions. Further, the projects tend to have greater project-level additionality (see below) than carbon avoidance projects. Additionally, the Oxford Principles for Net-Zero Aligned Offsetting recommends a shift to carbon removal-based offsets and, eventually, to carbon removal-based offsets with long-lived storage. Causality Causality refers to the extent to which the project actually causes reduced GHGs in the atmosphere. Determination of causality comes from understanding the “counterfactual”, which is what the state of the world would have been like without the project. However, this can be difficult to determine. For instance, consider a project that protects a forested area from being deforested. Determining causality requires answering two questions. First, does avoiding deforestation lead to reduced GHGs? This is a purely scientific question, which can be answered by consulting the literature. It is well-established that cutting down a forest leads to more GHGs in the atmosphere, since the trees no longer absorb CO2 and they will emit stored CO2 if the trees are burned or allowed to rot in the process. This part of causality is relatively easy to establish in this example. Secondly, would the trees have been cut down in the absence of the project? If not, then the project is not avoiding emissions. This is more difficult, as it is not possible to know with certainty what would have happened without the project, or what certifiers refer as the “baseline” scenario. Offset projects must make the case that their project leads to fewer trees being cut down, and they generally use data concerning deforestation rates before the project or in similar areas. This type of analysis is difficult for an offset certifier to validate, especially since the project developer has an incentive to exaggerate the amount of causality. For example, widespread over-crediting was recently observed in California’s forest carbon offset program to the tune of an estimated 30 million tons of CO2e and $410 million. While the certification agencies attempt to assess causality, the standards of evidence are much lower than generally accepted in the social science impact evaluation literature. For instance, the parts of the model that are verified are generally proximate inputs (like say, usage of a stove) rather than final ones (such as total fuel burned in real life usage). Another consideration that has proven difficult to manage is leakage. Leakage occurs when efforts to reduce emissions in one place shifts emissions to another location. For example, an offset that protects an area of forest may simply lead to increased deforestation in another area. Leakage is difficult to monitor, and controlling for it is extremely complex. Causality is central to an offset project being valid, and a project must have high certainty of causality to be recommended by Giving Green. In cases (such as the forestry example) where changes in human behavior are needed to guarantee causality, Giving Green requires evidence from a rigorous impact evaluation to validate this behavior change. A rigorous impact evaluation provides a convincing measurement of the counterfactual, and calculates the change in GHGs compared to this counterfactual scenario. Project-level additionality Project-level additionality is satisfied if a project would not have happened without the sales of offsets. This requirement tends to be satisfied for projects run by non-profits who solely rely on offset revenue in order to operate. However, it can be very difficult to determine for projects with multiple revenue streams. For instance, consider a wind energy project that is considering selling carbon offsets. In many markets, wind energy is cost-competitive with other kinds of energy, and wind energy plants are built and profitable without the need for carbon offsets. In this case, a wind energy project does not satisfy project-level additionality. However, in other markets, a wind energy plant may not be profitable, and therefore would not have been built without an additional revenue stream from offsets. In this case, the offset project would have project-level additionality. Two characteristics of such offset projects make project-level additionality difficult to assess: It is very difficult to verify the actual financial circumstances of the project. In order to receive certification, project developers need to provide a financial model showing that with offset revenue they would be profitable, but without offset revenue, they would not be. However, the projections of future flows of costs and revenues necessary for such a model rely on a significant amount of guesswork. Additionally, project developers have every incentive to claim additionality and therefore be eligible to sell credits. The offset certifiers likely have no way to validate these models, and also must rely on their own guesswork to decide if they believe the project developers’ case. Verifying project-level additionality is further complicated by the timing of the carbon market. Offsets are only certified once a project is up and running. For something like a grid energy project, most of the costs are up-front and therefore have already happened by the time any offsets can be sold. That makes it difficult to consider the purchase of offsets as having caused any emissions reductions. One way to get around this is for projects to receive guarantees from buyers to purchase the offsets in the future (known as an Emissions Reduction Purchase Agreement, or ERPA). In these cases, it is appropriate to take a less literal view of project-level additionality. If projects were undertaken due to the expectation of being able to sell offsets, purchasing the offsets justifies this expectation and can help uphold the market in the future. Additionally, if the project developer is continuing to develop new projects, the offset purchase can provide working capital for these new projects. That being said, it is hard to justify the additionality of offsets from a capital-intensive project that are purchased far after the capital expenditure. In our assessments at Giving Green, we accept claims of project-level additionality only when projects rely on offsets for most or all of their revenue stream, or when offsets are crucial to raising private sector capital. The project also must not be required by regulations. We may recommend projects that do not satisfy project-level additionality if they satisfy marginal additionality, as described below. Marginal additionality Most project certifiers do not consider marginal additionality, but Giving Green believes it is important and overlooked. Marginal additionality means that each additional offset purchased contributes to reduced emissions. This is an important requirement for projects to work as advertised: the purchase of every single offset must cause extra GHG reduction. For example, let us consider a landfill gas capture project, where methane is captured and flared. Assuming there are no regulations requiring such a system and the gas is not sold, the project clearly satisfies project-level additionality, since offsets are needed to fund the entire project. However, a landfill will keep producing gas for many years, and after some time the cost of the project will be covered. In this case, additional offset sales simply add to the profits of the project developer, and certainly do not lead to reduced emissions. The opposite can also be true: projects can have marginal additionality without having project-level additionality. For instance, consider a for-profit provider of clean cookstoves. The company may have a viable business model, and would exist and sell cookstoves even if offsets were not available. Therefore, they do not exhibit project-level additionality. However, if they do sell offsets, this allows them to lower their prices, therefore selling more stoves. In this case, each additional offset can contribute to additional lowering of stove costs, resulting in more stoves being sold. Therefore, the project satisfies marginal additionality. Two significant factors determining whether a project have marginal additionality are its modularity and whether it is a non-profit. Projects that are modular , as opposed to those that primarily undertake one large capital expense, are more likely to use offset purchases for continued emissions reduction. For instance, service-based offset providers, like those who procure and destroy ozone-depleting substances, or manufacturers of small products, such as cookstove manufacturers, can easily reinvest offset proceeds into additional emissions reduction. For projects that do involve a large expense, offsets sold in early years are more likely to be additional, as this is when the project is paying down loans as opposed to contributing to profits. Non-profits are more likely to reinvest offset proceeds into additional activities. If a for-profit project developer is booking profits above the opportunity costs of its founders and investors, this is a reason to question marginal additionality: additional offset purchases simply increase profits and are unrelated to decreasing GHG emissions. An exception may exist where project developers can demonstrate the increased profits attract additional investment needed to deploy new GHG-mitigating projects. Giving Green addresses some of these challenges by considering vintage. Vintage refers to the year in which the carbon avoidance or carbon removal activity occurred. Projects that are selling carbon offsets for emissions that were avoided or removed more than two years ago do not meet our vintage standards. At Giving Green, we view marginal additionality to be critical to the validity of an offset, though we admit it can sometimes be difficult to ascertain. We need to have high confidence in the marginal additionality of an offset to be able to recommend it. Note that this is a higher bar than required by the offset certifiers, whose definition of additionality only includes project-level additionality. Finally, one needs to be sure that the emissions reductions are not claimed by multiple parties. For instance, both the producers and users of low-energy lightbulbs might apply for credits. Generally, we think the certification agencies do a good job of preventing this kind of behavior, and therefore Giving Green does not work to provide additional verification. Permanence An offset provides permanent emissions reduction if there is no chance of undoing the project’s activities. In projects that avoid emissions, this is frequently satisfied in a trivial manner. For instance, if a project incinerates a refrigerant, the GHG is destroyed and emissions are avoided permanently. But permanence can be more difficult to establish for forestry or other land use projects. For instance, consider an offset project that prevents a portion of forest from being logged. These gains can be completely undone if, in the future, the forest is logged or burns down. This is known as a “reversal”. Offset certifiers have tried to deal with this risk by requiring project developers to keep a certain percentage of offsets unsold in a so-called “buffer pool”. This acts as insurance, and is drawn down when there are demonstrated reversals. But it is difficult to be certain if reversals will actually be reported in the future, and if there will be enough offsets in the buffer pool. For instance, by some estimates the size of the buffer pool in the offset scheme in California’s cap and trade is insufficient due to increased fire risk. Giving Green views permanence as an important component of an offset’s validity, and therefore we need a high degree of certainty in permanence to recommend an offset. However, since land use projects are important and it is impossible to completely verify permanence for these, we may recommend projects with some permanence uncertainty as long as strong, proven methods are put in place to guard against reversals. Cost The public-facing cost of carbon offsets is typically based on market supply and demand determined by an intermediary or broker, and not on the cost of deploying the project itself. Giving Green utilizes project details, costing studies, and internal modeling to determine the real cost of the underlying project and address the lack of transparency in offset pricing. Projects with a lower cost per ton can reduce or remove GHGs more efficiently, but they may not reflect a high standard of quality based on factors like additionality and permanence. Giving Green uses tools like CarbonPlan’s permanence calculator to try to put projects with short-lived climate benefits on an even playing field with projects with more permanent benefits, though finding like-for-like cost comparisons between projects remains difficult. Co-benefits Some offset projects offer additional benefits besides GHG reductions, known as “co-benefits”. For instance, these could include improving the income of poor families, or improving biodiversity. Giving Green only uses GHG reductions to determine which offsets to recommend, and therefore it is not necessary for an offset to have co-benefits to gain our recommendation. However, as many offset purchasers would like to buy offsets with co-benefits, we highlight them in the analysis of our recommended offsets. Conclusion It is difficult to calculate the exact amount of emissions reduction caused by the purchase of a specific carbon credit, but it is still worth investing in good projects. Overall, our assessment is that it is extremely rare for a marketed offset to truly represent its advertised amount of emissions reduction. Calculating the amount of marginal emissions reduction from an offset sale is more of an art than a science. Even “good” offset projects tend to have some questions about their additionality or permanence. That said, on average, providing more funding for activities that are verifiably reducing GHGs in the atmosphere will almost certainly result in lower amounts of GHGs, even if it is hard to exactly quantify. Therefore, we still feel comfortable recommending “good” projects, even if we do not believe that the exact amount of emissions reduction advertised by the offset is achievable. We will keep looking for “perfect” offsets, but overall we think it is an unrealistic bar to achieve. This means that companies and individuals looking to go “carbon neutral” with certainty are likely to be disappointed. However, these entities can still finance valuable, albeit more expensive, climate-improving projects. Projects that demonstrate a high degree of additionality and permanence, for example, are the gold standard but may cost many times more than a standard carbon offset project. As such, Giving Green recommends that individuals and organizations view offsets simply as a philanthropic contribution to a pro-climate project with an evidence-based approach to reducing emissions, rather than a way to eliminate their contribution to climate change . And we think that individuals and organizations with flexibility in their donation options will get better value from donating to policy organizations rather than from purchasing offsets. Additional resources As our document is merely a brief overview, we recommend those interested in a more holistic view of the market explore these resources: “Securing Climate Benefit: A Guide to Using Carbon Offsets,” by the GHG Management Institute and the Stockholm Environmental Institute, offers an accessible description of how offsets work. The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting offers a useful taxonomy of the different categories of carbon offsets. McKinsey charts out a potential roadmap for scaling up carbon markets in “ A blueprint for scaling voluntary carbon markets to meet the climate challenge” . Forest Trends publishes an annual “State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets” report. The Berkeley Carbon Trading Project developed a database of voluntary offsets across all major offset project registries and Carbon Direct recently published some key findings in an in-depth analysis of the database. CarbonPlan has done some excellent research and analysis on carbon offsets, and carbon removals in particular.

Preventing deforestation is important, but many carbon offsets that plant trees may not have a real impact. Forestry 2021 // BACK Summary Preventing deforestation is a key part of fighting the climate crisis, but forest carbon offsets suffer from a number of problems that make it difficult to know their true impact. It is difficult to measure the contribution of any forest offset project, as there is limited rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of forest interventions. Of particular concern is “permanence”, which refers to the fact that in order to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere, trees must stay alive for many years. This adds an additional layer of uncertainty to any forest project that is very difficult to resolve. Given the limited evidence on the effectiveness of forestry interventions and concerns over leakage and permanence, we have not yet been able to find any forestry offsets we can recommend with confidence. We are continuing to look for high-quality forestry offset projects. This report was last updated in November 2021. This work is preliminary, and subject to change. Questions and comments are welcome. Overview Forest conservation, improved forest management, and afforestation/reforestation projects have gained popularity in recent years as “nature-based” solutions to fighting climate change. This makes sense, as deforestation contributes around 8% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions, and revitalization of forests can be a key carbon removal solution. Nature-based projects have received notable financial support from companies like Apple (launched a $200 million Restore Fund in 2021), Amazon (recently launched a $100 million restoration fund ), Netflix , and others to help achieve their net-zero climate goals. Globally, a recent initiative out of the World Economic Forum has even been established to plant 1 trillion trees by 2030 . This frenzy to support forest conservation and tree-planting comes as the world’s tropical forests lost 12.2 million hectares of tree cover in 2020 , a 12% increase from the year before. An area roughly the size of the Netherlands (4.2 million hectares) was lost within humid tropical forests in 2020 alone, and the rate of tropical forest loss looks like it will remain on pace in 2021 . The stunning rate of ongoing deforestation, leading to many degraded forests becoming carbon sources instead of carbon sinks , and the increased global attention to address this challenge warranted a deeper look into forest carbon offsets. Forestry as a carbon offset An analysis by Carbon Direct found that forest offset projects made up roughly 60% of carbon credits available in voluntary markets between 2015-2020. Forest offset projects generally fund NGOs working to protect or increase forest cover. There are three types of projects . The first type – avoided conversion or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation including conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) – identifies forested land that is under threat of deforestation and takes specific actions to prevent deforestation from happening. REDD+ is a United Nations backed framework to stop the destruction of forests (the “+” in “REDD+” signifies the added importance on conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks). REDD+ helps countries value forests on the basis of the carbon and ecosystem benefits they provide and establishes financial incentives for countries to not cut down forests. The second is improved forest management (IFM) projects that involve working with local communities to use improved land management techniques to maintain or increase carbon stock in a forest. The last type of project involves increasing forest cover by planting trees in previously non-forested areas (also known as “afforestation” or “reforestation”). Mechanism Forest projects have the potential to both remove CO2 and avoid CO2 emissions. For live trees, photosynthesis pulls CO2 and water from the environment and produces oxygen and glucose in return. Much of this carbon is stored in the wood of the tree, sequestering it from the atmosphere as long as the tree is alive. Carbon is also stored in other above ground biomass as well as in the soil. Once a tree dies, its biomass eventually decomposes, releasing some carbon back into the atmosphere. Projects that claim to avoid deforestation or maintain existing carbon stocks in forests are considered avoided emissions, because they prevent the release of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a forested area. Alternatively, IFM projects that claim to increase carbon stocks in a forested area may be considered carbon dioxide removal, as they attempt to enable a forested area to remove more GHG from the atmosphere than they did previously. Carbon Direct estimates 75% of IFM projects on voluntary carbon markets are avoided emissions projects and the rest could be considered both avoided emissions and removals.Finally, afforestation and reforestation projects also claim to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere by planting trees where they were previously cut down or did not exist before. Causality Unfortunately, it is hard to know the net contribution of any tree or forest to global carbon dioxide or global warming. This recent article in the journal Nature discusses the difficulty of assessing the effect of trees on climate change. While direct carbon capture likely has a cooling effect, trees emit other gases (including methane) into the atmosphere , some which may have warming effects. Additionally, trees can affect warming through changing the earth’s reflectivity of sunlight (known as an “albedo” effect). For example, conifers with dark leaves in far northern forests tend to absorb a lot of heat relative to highly reflective snow cover, reducing or even eliminating the positive effects of their carbon capture. This research is highly controversial, and many climate scientists believe that increasing forest cover is a key tool in fighting climate change. However, it is safe to say that our understanding of the relationship between trees and climate is still evolving and will improve with more direct measurement. Even under the assumption that increasing the number of trees unambiguously fights warming, establishing the causality of any given forest project on carbon sequestration benefits that qualify as additional (beyond business as usual) can be difficult. For example, some forest offset projects aim to prevent deforestation by paying landowners to not cut down their trees - but how can you really know that they would have cut down the trees without the credit? Organizations like Verra and Gold Standard that sell offsets set detailed standards and require projects to document the history of the land and suggest what would have happened in the absence of credits. But there is limited rigorous evidence using valid counterfactuals on the effect of forest interventions. In fact, it was recently discovered that many forested areas that were never under threat of being cut down were sold and marketed to major offset buyers. In another investigation , systematic over-crediting of forest offsets under California’s forest offset program was uncovered and was estimated to amount to 30 million tons of CO2 worth $400 million. The over-crediting was the result of project developers overstating the climate benefit by creating faulty counterfactual baselines. Without a convincing counterfactual it is hard to trust claims of the amount of change in forest cover. Forest projects can also suffer from “leakage” – the concept that preventing deforestation in one area may just cause it to increase in other areas. This is likely true if the underlying demand for non-forested land is not addressed. For example, a project in Brazil might seek to protect a certain forested area from being converted to pasture land, but if the ranchers’ demand goes unmitigated they will likely just shift their activities to another forest where the project is not operating. Whether or not there is leakage in a given project depends heavily on the underlying reason for deforestation, as well as the outside options for the people who are demanding the deforestation. Forest carbon offset projects do not try to directly measure greenhouse gas emissions or quantify other contributions to warming, presumably because doing so would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, program staff model carbon capture based on the number and type of trees planted, managed, or conserved. But project developers face the incentive to exaggerate claims about the number and type of trees, as well as various forest management practices that affect net carbon reduction. Agencies such as Verra address this by requiring periodic audits, but these are generally contracted by the program implementer, which presents a conflict of interest. In the public policy literature, there are few rigorous impact evaluations of forest interventions. One exception is a recent RCT by Jayachandran et. al. (2017) published in the journal Science. This RCT studied a program in Uganda in which farmers were paid to not cut down their trees. They indeed found decreased deforestation compared to control areas, and established that leakage was unlikely to be occurring. Another study of a government-run payments for ecosystems (PES) program implemented in Mexico that compensated communities for protecting ecologically valuable land resulted in a reduced rate of tree cover loss in areas enrolled in the program compared to areas that were not. Some areas at particularly high risk of deforestation saw reductions in tree cover loss by 40%, though overall rates of observed forest cover change were low. A more recent study mapping over 400 tree plantations in India planted between 1980 and 2017 raised serious questions about the success of tree planting and forest restoration campaigns, finding no change in tree canopy cover across the plantations studied. Potential reasons for this could be low survival rates of planted trees and tree planting where canopy cover is already dense. A review of 12 localized REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, and enhance carbon stocks) projects found mixed outcomes in terms of increased carbon stocks, with the diversity of interventions across projects making it difficult to understand the drivers of differential effects. Overall, it is difficult to validate the causality of any given forest project and for that reason, causality is assessed as low (or at least uncertain)for many forest projects. Companies have emerged to better track forest activities, estimate CO2 levels, and identify leakage using satellite imagery, LiDAR imaging, and artificial intelligence, but it is still too early to determine whether these technologies can address causality concerns successfully at scale. Project-level additionality In general, forest conservation programs are run by NGOs dependent on outside funding or private sector project developers. For NGO-run projects, it seems reasonable to assume that income from offsets are directly fueling project operations, allowing more activities than without them. For these projects, we assess project-level additionality as high . However, sometimes forest offsets are related to enterprises hoping to make a profit by selling lumber. In these cases, it is possible that the enterprise was profitable without offsets, and therefore may not satisfy project-level additionality. Marginal additionality Forest projects generally need continual revenue flow to keep operating, and can use additional funding to expand their operations. We therefore believe that a well-functioning forest project is likely to satisfy marginal additionality. A well-functioning forest projects would, however, need to demonstrate that offset revenues resulted in protection of areas that would have been deforested or resulted in new carbon stocks added each year . Long-running project may claim continued credits since without the project, more and more of the forest would have been degraded each year. But this is very difficult to verify. Further, the vintage of the forest offset project must be taken into consideration as well. Vintage refers to the year the emissions reduction actually took place. For forest projects where emissions reductions actually took place many years in the past we would assess the marginal additionality as low. Permanence Trees capture and store carbon as biomass as the tree grows. This carbon is not eliminated, but converted into tree matter and fixed to the soil, and if the tree dies and decays (or burns) it will be released back into the air. The ability of trees to reduce atmospheric carbon depends on their survival over decades. If trees that are planted or conserved end up getting destroyed in the future, most benefits of the project are lost (except a delay in GHG emissions). Risks to permanence can be unintentional (such as fires and pests), or intentional (such as logging). To address the risks of such “reversals”, voluntary certifying agencies such as Verra assigns risk score to forest projects and require a risk-related proportion of credits to be put into a risk buffer pool. However, it is unclear whether future monitoring of reversals will be adequate, and if the buffer pool will be enough to account for them. For instance, a recent report by the non-profit CarbonPlan calls into question whether the buffer pool in forest offsets in California’s cap and trade market is sufficient given increased susceptibility to forest fires. Meanwhile, over 150,000 acres of forested areas along America’s West Coast previously used as forest offsets have burned to the ground this past summer alone. Additionally, a recent article by the investigative journalism organization ProPublica looked into a myriad of forest conservation offset projects, and came to the following conclusion: “In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.” The conservation program studied in Jayachandran et al (2017) only lasted two years, so they address permanence questions in their article. The authors do not make a claim of permanence- instead they assume that deforestation will likely resume once the program ends, and therefore the benefits of project come from delaying the deforestation. While they do find that the program is cost-effective even when only considering a delay in deforestation, this conclusion comes from a complicated calculation relying on an assumed discount rate and evolution of the social cost of carbon over time. The parameters chosen in this calculation are controversial, and therefore we don’t have a high degree of confidence that a short-term program would be cost effective. To permanently offset carbon emissions the program would have to be run in perpetuity, making the cost of the offset prohibitively high. Permanence is an important consideration because, once emitted, CO2 can remain in the atmosphere for anywhere between 300 and 1,000 years . It is therefore questionable for forest projects to credibly claim long-term climate benefits if there is a high risk of reversing advertised benefits within a timespan of a few years or even a few decades. Overall, permanence is a persistent issue in forest projects, as it is very difficult to permanently guarantee an emissions reduction with a temporary project. As a result, we assess permanence of many forest offset projects as low . Cost The average price of forest offsets within voluntary carbon markets was $4.73 per ton as of August 2021. However, most forest projects are avoidance-based, so this price mostly reflects the price of avoidance projects. Projects that provide carbon removal tend to be much more expensive as they require significant effort to plant and maintain new trees. According to Forest Trends Ecosystem Marketplace, afforestation and reforestation projects that claim carbon removal benefits have an average price of $8.10 or roughly twice that of the average forest offset. While these prices are low relative to other forms of emissions avoidance and carbon removal, their true cost is difficult to assess given questions about causality and permanence. On causality, most projects establish buffer pools that are not sold as offset credits to account for a percentage of trees dying during the life of a project. Recent reports suggest that typical buffer pools put in place (10-20% of the total project) are straining as wildfires, disease, and pests multiply. Increasing these buffer pools would significantly increase cost. On the permanence front, CarbonPlan recently developed a tool to estimate the equivalent cost of making a temporary project’s carbon removal benefits permanent. Assuming the temporary project (e.g. afforestation/reforestation) lasted 20 years which was subsequently renewed by another 20-year project and repeated for 1,000 years, with a 10% annual risk of project failure (e.g. due to forest fires), and applying a 3% discount rate on future costs, buyers should budget around $37/ton for a project that costs $8/ton today in order for it deliver carbon removal benefits on a 1,000 year basis. In practice, delivering those permanent benefits by sequentially implementing projects for 1,000 years each with a 20-year duration would prove to be difficult. Assuming after 60 years of renewing 20-year long projects, the project is replaced by a direct air capture project with permanent carbon removal at a cost of $200/ton (well below today’s average cost for our recommended permanent carbon removal providers), the budgeted price increases to $65/ton (plus or minus $9), much higher than the advertised $8/ton price. Buyers should be aware that challenges with the permanence and causality of forest projects are not reflected in their cost. Co-benefits Co-benefits to forest projects may include ecosystem conservation, biodiversity, and recreation. Some projects can increase income-generating opportunities, while others can hinder these opportunities from local inhabitants, depending on land tenure and other considerations. Co-benefits can vary widely from project to project, meaning that co-benefits will need to be assessed on a project to project basis. Assessment of forestry projects Overall, our assessment of forest projects puts us in a difficult situation. Conserving forests is a clear necessity in the fight against climate change, and there is no reason to believe that this conservation will happen based on market forces. Therefore, there is a need for additional funding for conservation, and the offset market could be a good way to achieve this funding. For a high-quality project, it’s likely that funding conservation is one of the most cost-effective ways to lower GHG emissions. However, assessing the causal impact of any offset on GHG reduction is extremely difficult, and we do not believe that the certification procedures put in place by the offset certifiers give a high enough level of certainty to trust any specific project. We are not the only ones to come to this conclusion on forest offsets. For instance, a guide to assessing the validity of carbon offsets by Broekhoff et al (2019) categorizes forest offsets as being “higher risk” of being low quality due to concerns about additionality and permanence. While quality forest projects certainly deserve funding, it may just be that the offset market is not the correct mechanism to deliver this funding. Offsets require high standards of certainty that it is very difficult for forest projects to meet. Finding the right forest project Forest offsets are one of the most popular offsets available in voluntary carbon markets. The numerous projects behind these offsets vary significantly in terms of quality, cost, and co-benefits. The popularity, variety, and challenges associated with forest offsets prompted us to think about what features we would expect to see in a forest offset project that would make us confident in recommending it. We determined such a forest project would need to demonstrate the following: 1. Causality: The project would need to show a clear causal impact, meaning: a. A clearly identified counterfactual that shows deforestation happening without the project, or lower carbon stock in the forested area without IFM or afforestation interventions b. Sophisticated analysis demonstrating that leakage is not happening c. Takes place in geographies where albedo affect is not a concern (e.g. tropics) 2. Marginal Additionality: The project is currently active and the funding received is applied towards continued advancement of the specific climate benefits claimed. 3. Permanence: The project demonstrates low risk of reversal, and has means of monitoring reversals. Specifically, the forested area would need a track record of low risk of forest fire or widespread disease. Permanence risks are addressed by a strong buffer pool. 4. Cost: Acknowledging there will always be limitations to permanence with forest-based projects, the costs would have to be low enough to demonstrate that over a 1,000 year period, it would still be more cost-effective than methods of permanent carbon dioxide removal (tools like Carbon Plan’s permanence calculator can help calculate this). 5. Co-benefits: The project does not harm or disrupt the livelihoods of individuals living in nearby communities. Closing the quality gap Recently, new approaches and technological innovations have been leveraged to improve on some of the challenges underlying many forest projects. The following organizations are on the leading edge of addressing some of these problems: Pachama is a broker of existing forest avoidance and removal-based offset projects that uses LiDAR imaging and satellite imaging to estimate biomass volume and carbon stock in a project’s forested area. The company uses machine learning models to estimate counterfactuals (if there were no carbon offset project) and uses radar data to monitor changes in forest cover to detect instances of deforestation. The company also monitors leakage risk for forested areas surrounding a project. Based on these analyses, Pachama identifies certified forest carbon credits where it believes the underlying assumptions are particularly credible and resells them on its marketplace. Pachama’s technologies could help improve measurement of the causal impact of a forest project, but gaps still remain in accurately measuring carbon stock, fully eliminating counterfactual concerns, and addressing permanence issues. Jurisdictional REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) builds on previous REDD+ initiatives that were designed to offer incentives to developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and improve sustainable management of forests. Jurisdictional REDD+ refers to an accounting framework that establishes consistent baselines and carbon crediting approaches across forest projects within a jurisdiction like a state or country. Proponents believe that taking a jurisdictional approach to REDD+ reduces the risk of leakage, so that efforts to preserve forests in one area do not lead to increased deforestation in another. Initiatives like Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) are developing standardized procedures to improve the integrity of crediting emissions reductions and removals in REDD+ projects, and enhancing comparability across jurisdictions. Project developers like Emergent serve as an intermediary between tropical forest countries and the private sector to facilitate transactions that meet ART’s verification standards. NCX utilizes forest mapping techniques to make an accurate prediction of carbon stock across US forests, and then facilitates an exchange between landowners and offset buyers to defer timber harvests. NCX’s key technological innovation is a detailed “basemap”, that provides estimates of predicted deforestation for every plot of forested land in the United States. These predictive estimates of deforestation provide the estimates of avoided emissions from landowners who join NCX. Aside from claiming to quantify carbon stock more accurately, NCX has a unique approach to permanence. Their projects only delay tree-cutting by one year, and they sell a guarantee of this delay to credit purchasers. They then claim that delaying tree-cutting on 31 acres for one year is equivalent in terms of avoided emissions to permanently avoiding tree-cutting on one acre. NCX attempts to address leakage concerns by requiring landowners to enroll their entire properties on their platform and makes their platform available to small landowners. While all of these advances are laudable, we still have concerns about the project attracting landowners who were not going to cut down their forests, market-level leakage, and the actual value of one-year contracts. Each of the above organizations and initiatives attempt to address different challenges, from causality and additionality to leakage and permanence. Giving Green intends to dive further each of these solutions, and follow their progress as they continue to improve. We hope that advances in technology will eventually allow the market to produce reliable forest offsets. References Broekhoff, Derik Gillenwater, Michael Colbert-Sangree, Tani Cage, Patrick “Securing Climate Benefit: A Guide to Using Carbon Offsets”, November 2019, http://www.offsetguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11.15.19.pdf Jayachandran, S., De Laat, J., Lambin, E. F., Stanton, C. Y., Audy, R., & Thomas, N. E. (2017). Cash for carbon: A randomized trial of payments for ecosystem services to reduce deforestation. Science, 357(6348), 267-273. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6348/267 Popkin, Gabriel (2019) How Much Can Forests Fight Climate Change? Nature 565, 280-282 (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z Song, L., & Moura, P. (2019). An (even more) inconvenient truth: why carbon credits for forest preservation may be worse than nothing. ProPublica. https://features.propublica.org/brazil-carbon-offsets/inconvenient-truth-carbon-credits-dont-work-deforestation-redd-acre-cambodia/

Do waste biogas capture carbon offsets avoid CO2 emissions? Read our independent analysis. Waste Biogas Capture // BACK This report was last updated in November 2020. It may no longer be accurate, both with respect to the evidence it presents and our assessment of the evidence. We may revise this report in the future, depending on our research capacity and research priorities. Questions and comments are welcome. Summary Waste sites (such as landfills and agricultural waste storage) produce biogas from the decomposition of organic materials, including the powerful greenhouse gas methane. With the right infrastructure and systems, companies and municipalities can capture this methane and either destroy it or convert it into energy. Biogas capture projects cause a clear reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, but it is unclear whether waste biogas carbon offsets actually cause the projects to be implemented. While we have not yet found any biogas-related carbon offsets to recommend, we do believe that there are likely circumstances where these offsets do cause real emissions reductions. Better biogas offsets are in places where methane capture is not mandated by regulation (either current or future), and in sites where the electricity generated by biogas is not enough to make the project profitable. Overall, we believe that there are likely good biogas offsets that are additional, but thus far we have been unable to find any that meet our criteria. As not all offsets are offered online, it is possible that these high-quality offsets are being directly sold to corporate buyers or are only transacted through brokers. Giving Green will continue searching for biogas projects we can recommend with confidence. Waste biogas capture as a carbon offset Landfills and agricultural waste sites produce biogas from the decomposition of organic materials. Biogas is composed of primarily methane and carbon dioxide (CO2), along with a small amount of other organic compounds. Both methane and CO2 are greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Methane is 28-36 times better at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100 year period, making it a particularly potent GHG [1]. Of all methane produced in the United States, landfills are the third-largest source with approximately 14% of overall emissions [2]. Reducing methane emissions is a key priority in combating climate change. Waste sites emit methane through an anaerobic process. Large amounts of organic material (e.g. food, wood) are deposited into landfills, and agricultural waste sites contain production byproducts (such as plant husks or animal excrement). Bacteria decompose these materials and produce a mixture of gases, which is then emitted into our atmosphere and contributes to global warming. Biogas normally escapes from waste sites into the atmosphere soon after it is produced. However, if the right infrastructure and systems are put in place at waste sites, companies and municipalities can capture the methane and either destroy it or convert it into energy. Gas extraction wells and piping systems can be set up at waste sites and used to move biogas from the production site to treatment locations. At the treatment locations, biogas is either flared (burned to convert methane into a less harmful gas) [3] or converted into energy like electricity or car fuel. To encourage biogas flaring or capture, the US Government regulates large emitters of GHG through the Clean Air Act and through reporting requirements to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Regulations require landfill emissions to be measured and publicly documented. Large emitters are required to either capture and destroy or convert their landfill gas into a reusable resource [4]. However, biogas emissions from agricultural operations and smaller landfills are more lightly regulated, if at all. Carbon offsets fund the construction and upkeep of biogas capture and treatment infrastructure. In the absence of regulation or profitable circumstances, biogas capture and treatment is unlikely to occur. Causality Overall, if projects are executed correctly, then waste biogas capture is highly likely to cause reductions in atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. Project-level additionality In the absence of regulation or profitable circumstances, biogas capture and treatment is unlikely to happen. As such, carbon offsets can be catalytic for these projects in cases in which they are additional. The cost of biogas projects depends on the size, location, and configuration of the site. There are significant capital outlays at the start of a project, as the physical infrastructure is designed and created. After the initial expenditure, there are routine costs to upkeep equipment and oversee operations. For projects that are not profitable and exempt from government regulation (e.g. too small), carbon offsets can provide a financial incentive to capture and use the biogas. The EPA estimates that a privately owned and operated project with a 3 megawatt turbine and no previously installed capture system costs approximately $8.5 million to install and will lose approximately $3.5 million over a 15-year lifetime [5]. While the above cost does not factor in tax credits or exemptions or the ability to use the electricity produced for on-site operations, the cost of biogas capture and treatment systems are often prohibitive for companies and municipalities [6]. Marginal additionality The marginal additionality of waste biogas carbon offset projects varies based on where the project is in the project lifecycle. Before construction, while trying to achieve sufficient financing for the project to go ahead, carbon offsets are likely to be marginally additional (as long as the target goal is eventually reached). After construction, however, the marginal additionality of waste biogas capture projects is relatively low as the binding financial outlay is for the construction of the initial system. In some cases carbon offsets might continue to fund operational expenses, which would satisfy marginal additionality; we have not yet found any projects in this space that make a compelling claim to use carbon offsets in that way. Permanence Some waste biogas projects destroy emissions; these have high permanence. Once the emissions are captured and destroyed, they are not at risk of leaking back into the atmosphere. We do not think that the capture of these emissions is likely to increase emissions elsewhere. For projects that use captured emissions to produce energy, we see the permanence as lower. These projects often use the gases to create energy through a process that eventually emits them, meaning that they are not permanently removed from the atmosphere. In these projects, the benefit is more “clean” energy created by gases that would otherwise have just leaked into the atmosphere without any additional benefit. Co-benefits With projects that use waste biogas to create electricity or other energy, the co-benefits are more energy produced for the surrounding regions. We view this co-benefit as fairly weak as most of the surrounding where these projects are happening have other sources of energy. Assessment of waste biogas capture projects Carbon offsets for biogas are most “impactful” when they meet the best-in-class standards for carbon offsets - additional, not overestimated, permanent, not claimed by another entity, and not associated with significant social or environmental harms - along with meeting the following conditions [7]: Project is not required by regulation to implement biogas capture and treatment Project is not profitable from the sale of renewable resources from biogas treatment Project is capital constrained and will not happen without carbon offsets Carbon offsets go directly to purchasing biogas project infrastructure or maintenance, as opposed to non-essential inputs When reviewing projects for this report, we found that it was difficult to get enough information to determine whether projects met the above conditions. Simply being certified by one of the major certifying agencies did not give us confidence that the project was indeed additional. We expect that some biogas projects will meet these conditions, and some will not. This appears to be confirmed by what others have concluded [8][9]. For example, the GHG Management Institute and Stockholm Environment Institute say that the usefulness of landfill gas projects and associated carbon offsets depends on the project. They state: “Varies by location. Projects are likely additional in most parts of the developing world. In developed countries, including the United States, some projects are pursued to avoid triggering regulatory requirements, and projects that generate energy can be economical without carbon revenue.” The report also describes how there is uncertainty in baseline levels of methane output with these projects, which further adds to the difficulty of quantifying their impact [10][11]. We therefore focused the remainder of our research on waste biogas projects in developing countries and projects involving small landfills in the US. Developing countries: Unfortunately, we found few offsets in developing countries available for sale online. The UN offers two such projects, capturing biogas from agricultural waste in India and Thailand. However, after further consideration, we didn’t feel comfortable recommending either. The Ratchaburi Farms Biogas Project in Thailand is a biogas capture system that generates energy for use on a large pig farm. The first issue with additionality is that the system may be profitable, and as a large company it’s plausible that the farm could and would have made the investment without the carbon credits. But more worrisome is that the project is quite old. It started operating in 2008, and in its original application for offset certification, it requested credits for 10 years. The project was a partnership with the Government of Denmark, who committed to buying some of the credits as part of their commitment under the Kyoto accord. So as far as we can tell, the current offsets for sale were generated before 2018 but were not part of the purchase agreement with Denmark. Given this, it is quite hard to believe that expectation of voluntary offsets purchases 10 years in the future actually contribute to additionality. The Mabagas Power Plant in India is somewhat more promising. It generates energy by procuring animal waste from nearby farmers and feeding this waste into its digesters. Without this plant, this waste would degrade and release biogas into the air. There are no regulations requiring the construction of the plant. However, a couple of worries have prevented us from recommending these offsets. First, the project seems plausibly profitable. Although the IRR documents submitted as part of the offset certification procedure claim that selling carbon credits is necessary to achieve viability, these numbers are hard to verify. Next, there is a question of who precisely is on the receiving end of these offsets. Mabagas was launched as a joint venture between two companies that mainly deal in (petroleum-based) oil and gas: the state-owned Indian Oil Company, and the German company Marquard & Bahls. As revenue from offsets will ultimately flow to these companies or their subsidiaries, it is unlikely that this capital will fuel more green projects. Overall, we cannot recommend these offsets given the information available at this time. US-based projects: Although large emitters are required to install methane capture systems, small landfills are not covered by these regulations, and carbon credits may certainly spur them to build capture systems. However, regulations are constantly changing [12], and plants may install landfill gas capture systems in anticipation of coming under regulatory authority (due to expansion or changing regulations). We explored US landfill gas offset options and, at least given the data available, felt unable to confidently recommend any of them. For instance, this landfill in Massachusetts seems to be a project that was very much spurred by carbon credits, with credits originally issued for ten years. However, the offsets available for purchase now are for the second issuance of offsets, while the actual infrastructure seems to only have been modestly updated. It is unclear what additionality these new offsets are providing. The Hilltop Landfill in Virginia was a small landfill that installed methane capture financed with carbon credits. But the landfill closed in 2013, and it seems like the investment has already been refunded from previous carbon credit sales [13]. So further sales are likely not additional. Other options we explored are larger landfills that seem likely to fall under methane capture regulations as they grow or as new regulations are put into place. Overall, we believe that there are likely good biogas offsets that are additional, but currently, we have been unable to find any that meet our criteria. As not all offsets are offered online, it is possible that these high-quality offsets are being directly sold to corporate buyers or are only transacted through brokers. Giving Green will continue searching for biogas projects we can recommend with confidence. [1] https://www.sepa.org.uk/media/28988/guidance-on-landfill-gas-flaring.pdf [2] https://www.epa.gov/lmop/frequent-questions-about-landfill-gas [3] https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-gas [4] https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-gas#methane [5] https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-landfill-methane [6] Direct-use projects (i.e. where the energy created is used to power upkeep of the landfill) cost less and have a slightly higher ROI, but are less common because they require their facilities to be nearby. [7] http://www.offsetguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11.15.19.pdf [8] http://www.offsetguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11.15.19.pdf [9] https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/buildings-and-cities/landfill-methane [10] http://www.offsetguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11.15.19.pdf [11] https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/buildings-and-cities/landfill-methane [12] http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/16424/epa-proposes-federal-plan-under-2016-landfill-gas-regulations [13] https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/offsetting-local-inside-landfill-gas-project/ References https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-gas https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-04/documents/lmop_2017_special_session_cowan.pd https://www.r-e-a.net/work/biowaste-recycling/ https://wasteadvantagemag.com/business-case-carbon-offsets-waste-diversion-waste-digestion-composting/ https://sustainability.wm.com/downloads/WM_CDP_Climate_Change_Response.pdf https://earthworks.org/issues/flaring_and_venting/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_gas_utilization https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-landfill-methane https://www.terrapass.com/project/flathead-county-landfill-gas-to-energy http://www.offsetguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11.15.19.pdf http://www.offsetguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11.15.19.pdf https://www.sepa.org.uk/media/28988/guidance-on-landfill-gas-flaring.pdf http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/permitting/toxics-emission-factors-from-combustion-process-.pdf?sfvrsn=0 https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-landfill-methane https://www.co2offsetresearch.org/consumer/Methane.html https://americancarbonregistry.org/carbon-accounting/standards-methodologies/landfill-gas-destruction-and-beneficial-use-projects https://americancarbonregistry.org/carbon-accounting/standards-methodologies/landfill-gas-destruction-and-beneficial-use-projects/landfill-gas-destruction-and-beneficial-use-methodology-v1-0-march-2017.pdf

Table of contents  Introduction 2024 key impact metrics 2024 highlights 2025 plans Appendix 1.Introduction In 2024, Giving Green’s research and recommendations influenced $17 million  to high-impact climate nonprofits—our strongest year yet. But the numbers only tell part of the story. As our research expertise and capacity grew, we uncovered new opportunities worldwide for high-impact climate giving. Today, the work of our Top Nonprofits spans the globe, driving impact on an international scale. Meanwhile, the Giving Green Fund’s grantmaking capacity grew significantly  in 2024, driven by a growing number of donors looking to maximize the impact of their giving, including two transformative gifts totaling $11 million. This expansion has enabled us to support a broader range of rigorously vetted, high-impact climate nonprofits, each advancing effective and diverse strategies for climate mitigation. Helping more donors make evidence-based giving decisions has been another priority. Through enhanced communications, our research is now guiding climate-conscious giving at every level —from micro-donations of just $0.30 to transformational gifts of $10 million. We are here to make high-impact climate giving easier for everyone, no matter how much they can give. This momentum would not be possible without the broader climate ecosystem. Our regional effective giving partners  tailor our research to the needs of their audiences. Impact networks and communities  connect us with like-minded allies and challenge us with fresh perspectives. And field-leading climate experts who provided feedback on our work keep us accountable to our organizational values: truth-seeking, humility, transparency, and collaboration. As 2025 begins, shifting political landscapes present new challenges for climate action, particularly in the U.S. Yet, we remain confident in the relevance and resilience of our recommended philanthropic strategies. We will continue to identify scalable, feasible, and neglected opportunities  that maximize climate impact, even in these uncertain times. The road to net zero is long and unpredictable, but we are committed to the long haul. Thank you for being on this journey with us. The contents of our 2024 annual impact report can be viewed directly in this blog post or the downloadable PDF below. Photo 1: Giving Green’s remote team gathered in Portland, Oregon recently for a few days of in-person reflection and planning. “I deeply appreciate your transparency and look forward to seeing how your organization and recommendations change over time.” — Giving Green donor “Addressing climate change takes many solutions, so it’s hard to pick just one when I’ve been in a position to give. I’m grateful for the work you do to find, vet, and diversify projects that need support - it’s a smart strategy! Thank you for connecting the funding to the work.” —​ Giving Green Fund donor 2.2024 key impact metrics Money moved (in USD) In 2024, Giving Green influenced an estimated $17.0 million toward high-impact climate nonprofits, up from $10.9 million in 2023  and $5.5 million in 2022 . One element that drove this growth was an anonymous $10 million donation  in the spring. Since our inception in 2020, we estimate that Giving Green has influenced a total of $37.2 million in evidence-based, high-impact climate giving. See the appendix for details on how we calculated these metrics. Figure 1: Money moved by calendar year Figure 2: Recipients of money moved by Giving Green in 2024. (The box at the bottom-right represents about $265,000 raised for our grantees outside the Giving Green Fund.) Impact multiplier   In 2024, we increased our “impact multiplier”—dollars we move to our recommendations, divided by our operating cost—to 21.7. This means that every dollar donated to Giving Green’s operations in 2024 yielded about $21.70 in additional funding for other high-impact climate organizations.  The vast majority of our expenses go to staff salaries and benefits. We have an overhead rate of 11% of expenditures that covers finance, legal, and administrative functions, provided by our fiscal sponsor, IDinsight . We do not charge an administrative overhead for the Giving Green Fund.  Full-time equivalent staff GG operations cost Money moved  Impact multiplier 2020 0.5 $60,000 $195,000 3.3x 2021 1 $151,000 $2,076,000 13.7x 2022 3.8 $483,000 $5,510,000 11.4x 2023 4.4 $645,000 $10,893,000 16.9x 2024 4.8 $783,000 $17,016,000 21.7x Total $2,122,000 $35,055,000 16.8x Table 1: Calculating Giving Green’s impact multipliers from operations cost and money move d 3.2024 highlights Identified three new high-impact philanthropic strategies In 2024, we prioritized eight philanthropic strategies , including three new ones (in bold): Reducing food systems emissions Decarbonizing aviation and maritime shipping Decarbonizing heavy industry Advancing next-generation geothermal energy Supporting advanced nuclear Advancing the energy transition in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) Advancing solar radiation management (SRM) governance Scaling demand for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) Historically, Giving Green has focused exclusively on climate mitigation—reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With expanded research scope in 2024, we explored “climate interventions”—strategies that do not address the source of warming but, given the rapid rate of climate change, offer promising opportunities to supplement emissions reductions and protect human and ecological well-being. SRM governance and CDR fall into this category. 1326 1. Released new research on philanthropic opportunities in Australia While the work of our Top Nonprofits spans globally, we acknowledge that each country has its own competitive edge in climate mitigation, determined by factors such as regulatory environment, research and development (R&D) infrastructure, geography, and access to natural resources.  In 2024, with funding from Australian Ethical , we updated our research on Australia’s competitive advantage in the green transition . We found that by focusing on industrial exports, Australian philanthropists have the potential to decrease global emissions by as much as 7%, a number that would be far more costly and difficult for almost any other nation to achieve. Photo 2: Giving Green’s 2024 report on high-impact climate giving in Australia The report, followed by a list of three recommended climate nonprofits in Australia, has influenced $775,000 AUD (about $488,000 USD) in donations to date. Additionally, our team member who oversaw the research was seconded to a major Australian foundation to help design its climate philanthropy strategy.  The report was picked up by media outlets such as The Australian ,   Inside Philanthropy , and Alliance Magazine . The report’s launch webinar attracted close to 100 people.  Giving Green Fund reached new heights In Q4 of 2024, the Giving Green Fund  announced disbursements to organizations beyond our Top Nonprofits for the first time, thanks to transformative donations from the Ray and Tye Noorda Foundation and an anonymous donor , as well as a growing number of donors who embrace the idea of a fund to maximize the impact of their giving. In addition to supporting our six Top Nonprofits, the disbursements supported 20 climate nonprofits worldwide that are advancing Giving Green’s prioritized philanthropic strategies. Specifically, we developed two types of grants: Growth grants  support emerging organizations, established organizations looking to expand in specific areas, as well as specific research projects, analyses and convenings.  Ecosystem grants  seek to strengthen the ecosystem of our prioritized philanthropic strategies by supporting a wider range of organizations that advance these strategies.  Deepened our thinking on systems change  When Giving Green started, we focused on looking for evidence-based climate solutions. Over time, we concluded that to maximize our impact, we have to encourage donors to embrace giving strategies that take bolder bets to change systems.  Reflecting on this journey, we released a report in 2024 on how we think about systemic change as a climate research organization and a climate funder . It covered how we define systems change, why climate philanthropy should support systems change, and how to measure the impact of systems-changing giving opportunities when faced with high uncertainty.  The report acts as an anchor to our flagship research and recommendations, clarifying our approach to maximizing impact, and encouraging donors to explore higher-impact philanthropic strategies that truly change the rules of the game.  Press mentions We knew from day one that producing climate philanthropy research alone is not enough; we must make our research accessible to donors of all sizes. Expanding our media presence has been a key part of this communications strategy.  In 2024, Giving Green was featured in the press 31 times, including coverage in 16 major outlets with global reach, feature stories in Heatmap and TriplePundit , and an op-ed in Alliance Magazine .  A notable highlight was an Associated Press story about the Giving Green Fund  that was picked up by 600+ outlets, including The Washington Post, ABC, Fast Company, and more, significantly expanding our reach. Ramped up event appearances to increase reach With a bigger and more geographically dispersed team, we deepened our engagement with donors and partnered through three booked-out in-person events and two webinars. Kicking off 2024 in London, we hosted a workshop   with a select group of funders and advisors on how philanthropy could make “the next big thing” happen by funding systems change.  In San Francisco, we held our first SF Climate Week event  which attracted 53 attendees. The room was filled with a variety of folks from allies and partners steeped in climate action, to climate-curious donors.   Photo 3: Giving Green’s panel at SF Climate Week Later that fall, we made our New York Climate Week debut  and gathered 100+ climate actors to discuss high-impact climate philanthropy, including leaders from three of our Top Nonprofits. As one of the attendees put it, the panel discussion effectively “acknowledged both the need for really powerful technical solutions combined with the need for systemic change”. Following the webinar during the Australian giving season in April, our year-end webinar announcing our Top Nonprofits  drew over 240 live attendees.  In addition to organizing our own events, we also ramped up our appearances at partner events, such as: Speaking to climate leaders in government, investment, and science about high-impact climate action at the British Consulate-General’s event in San Francisco  during SF Climate Week. Exchanging learnings on evidence-based giving at the Effective Giving Summit in Oxford. 4.Plans for 2025  Maximize money moved to our recommendations Building on the momentum in 2024, we hope to raise even more money for our Top Nonprofits and Giving Green Fund grantees.  Level up disbursement strategies for the Giving Green Fund As the Giving Green Fund grows, we will continue to experiment with dynamic disbursement strategies that maximize its impact.  Despite headwinds in U.S. federal policy, we believe that the philanthropic strategies that we have chosen continue to be relevant on a global scale. Additionally, we will prioritize making strategic, rapid response grants throughout 2025 to meet this unique political moment in the U.S. For example, we will be identifying grant opportunities that defend federal support for energy innovation, such as in nuclear and geothermal energy, which has traditionally garnered bipartisan support.  Update research on sustainable investment Since our initial assessment of climate impact investing  in 2021, we have observed increasing demand for evidence-based guidance on sustainable investment. In 2025, we hope to create the first portfolio-level climate impact evaluation of venture capital (VC). Between 2020 to 2023, 142 billion VC dollars were invested in climate tech. A landscape evaluation of climate VC will enhance investment decision-making processes and drive capital towards the highest-impact climate solutions.  We plan to conduct the research in 2025 and release the findings publicly in 2026. However, this work is funding-dependent. If you are interested in supporting this work, please reach out .  Take on at least two new consulting projects  While our flagship climate nonprofit recommendations help many donors maximize their climate impact, we know that one size does not fit all. That is why we take on special consulting projects  to address unique donor constraints and opportunities, broaden our impact, and diversify our revenue streams. In 2025, we are excited to launch at least two new initiatives in partnership with aligned funders: Identifying evidence-based ways philanthropy can protect biodiversity. Mapping out high-impact climate giving opportunities in Puerto Rico.   While these projects are funded by individual philanthropists, the results will be released publicly as part of our mission to make high-impact climate giving easier for everyone.  If you would like to explore consulting projects with us, please reach out .   We find high-impact climate initiatives.  You can turbocharge them.   Giving Green Incubated by IDinsight 5.Appendix Who we are Giving Green guides individuals, foundations, and businesses to make more effective climate giving decisions. We find evidence-based, cost-effective, and high-leverage organizations that maximize the climate impact of your money.  Our organization Our organization consists of three main functions: Research : conduct climate giving research and produce recommendations. Communications : disseminate findings to diverse audiences. Fundraising and grantmaking : we support a wide range of nonprofits through the Giving Green Fund , a climate grantmaking fund.  Our products and functions are guided by our organizational values : truth-seeking, humility, transparency, and collaboration. Theory of change Figure 3: Giving Green’s theory of change 2024 top climate nonprofit recommendations Figure 4: Giving Green’s 2024 Top Climate Nonprofits How we calculate impact metrics  1. Data sources To calculate money moved, we first ask each recommended organization for its best estimate of money directed from sources we have influenced. Example sources include: Donors who clicked on a recommended organization’s site from Giving Green’s site Donors who proactively mentioned hearing about a recommended organization from a media piece informed by Giving Green Foundations that made a gift after considering several sources of evidence, including Giving Green’s research It is worth noting that different organizations have different tracking methods and capabilities. We cross-reference data from recommended organizations with other sources, such as our internal tracking, conversations with large donors or business purchasers, and regranters facilitating donations to our recommendations.  2. Impact attribution Once we have this data, we multiply each dollar amount by a percentage that represents our estimate of the share of influence we had over that amount. This subjective assessment encompasses questions like: Were these donors influenced by multiple sources, and if so, does Giving Green only deserve “partial credit”? How certain are we that these donors were influenced by Giving Green versus another source?  For example, if a recommended organization raised $50,000 from a donor who used Giving Green as one of many resources in their decision making, we might assign ourselves 20%, or $10,000, of impact. However, if a donor says they used Giving Green as their primary information source, we might assign ourselves 100% of the impact. We assign three such percentages:  A “certain” percentage: what share of this money are we completely certain is attributable to Giving Green? A “best guess” percentage: taking into account the above factors An “optimistic” percentage: taking an optimistic view of the above factors  By adding all “best guess” amounts together, we reach a total “best guess” for money moved. Similarly, adding the “certain” amounts together and “optimistic” amounts together gives us an estimated range of money moved. Our certainty Estimate of money moved in 2024 Certain $15.2M Best guess $17.0M Optimistic $30.6M Table 2: Range of estimates of our money moved. In 2024, our “best guess” number is $17.0M. This is relatively close to our “Certain” number because a large share of this money went through the Giving Green Fund. Our “Optimistic” number is much higher primarily (but not entirely) because of a large donation directly given to one of our recommendations. We suspect this gift is due to the influence of Giving Green, but we do not have solid evidence; our “best guess” estimate includes an attribution of 10% on this gift to reflect that uncertainty, while our “optimistic” guess includes an attribution of 100%. 3. Uncertainties We are uncertain whether the “money moved” metric adequately accounts for the counterfactual impact of the money. If, for instance, a donor would have otherwise given to a nonprofit that is 50% as effective, should we credit ourselves with 50% of this money moved? Our current assumption, based on limited customer research, is that most donors would have given to significantly less effective nonprofits or not at all, but we recognize that this is a major uncertainty. We are also uncertain whether our data is capturing all of our donor audience, and therefore, our impact numbers may be a significant underestimate. For instance, it is relatively easy for us to assess our impact on mass-market online donors whose online gifts can be tracked. However, it is difficult to assess our influence with larger donors or business purchasers, who may give via check or wire transfer and not proactively mention Giving Green as an inspiration. For example, in several cases, we have heard that we influenced large gifts many months after the fact.

We're looking to work with a researcher based in Puerto Rico, who's excited about applying Giving Green's research methods to support climate action on the island. Location: Remote (Must be based in Puerto Rico) Compensation: Competitive for nonprofit sector, commensurate with experience Commitment: Contract-based with potential for full-time transition (note that this role will be hired directly by our locally-based partner and not by Giving Green) Languages: Fluency in English & Spanish required We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis. Applications received by March 30 will be prioritized. About Us We are looking for a Puerto-Rico-based Climate Researcher to join our team and help drive high-impact climate philanthropy in the region. Our work involves evaluating climate-focused nonprofits, analyzing the effectiveness of climate policies and technologies, and identifying funding opportunities to accelerate decarbonization efforts. Our research supports funders, businesses, and policymakers in making strategic decisions that maximize climate impact. To date, our recommendations have helped move over $30 million into climate solutions globally. With the support of a local funder, we’re expanding our focus on Puerto Rico to ensure the island’s unique environmental challenges are addressed. Who We’re Looking For: We are seeking a dedicated contractor with a background in climate science, policy, environmental economics, or related research fields to analyze climate-focused nonprofits and policies in Puerto Rico. The ideal candidate will have: Strong research and analytical skills to evaluate the effectiveness of climate interventions. Bilingual proficiency (English & Spanish) to engage with local organizations and international partners. Deep understanding of Puerto Rico’s environmental landscape , including energy transition challenges, conservation efforts, and climate resilience initiatives. Ability to conduct literature reviews, quantitative analyses, and expert interviews to assess high-impact climate strategies. Key Responsibilities Research & Analysis Conduct literature reviews and expert interviews to identify effective climate interventions in Puerto Rico. Assess the impact of climate-focused nonprofits, policy initiatives, and technological innovations. Perform quantitative modeling to analyze environmental and economic outcomes. Draft research reports and synthesis documents for both expert and general audiences. Contribute to shaping research agendas that align with regional climate needs. Engagement & Outreach Build relationships with key stakeholders, including local nonprofits, policymakers, and funders. Represent our research in media, reports, and stakeholder discussions. Assist in grant evaluation and due diligence for potential funding recipients in Puerto Rico. Qualifications & Skills: We encourage applicants with diverse backgrounds in climate science, policy, and philanthropy. While no one candidate will have all the skills listed below, we are looking for expertise in some of these areas and a willingness to grow in others: Education & Experience Bachelor's degree (required), advanced degree preferred but not necessary. Experience conducting desk-based research, policy analysis, or impact evaluations. Strong writing skills, with the ability to produce both technical reports and accessible summaries. Previous work in climate philanthropy, policy, or nonprofit evaluation is a plus. Sector Expertise (one or more of the following): Climate philanthropy: Understanding of nonprofit evaluation and funding strategies. Climate policy: Familiarity with Puerto Rican and US environmental policy frameworks. Climate tech: Knowledge of renewable energy, carbon removal, or other decarbonization solutions. Conservation & biodiversity: Experience in land use, reforestation, or marine protection. Other Skills Fluency in both English and Spanish , written and verbal (required). Self-starter with the ability to work independently and collaboratively. Entrepreneurial mindset with a passion for climate solutions. Legal authorization to work in Puerto Rico. Why Join Us? Make a real impact by helping shape climate funding strategies in Puerto Rico. Flexible & remote work with a contract-based structure and potential for full-time transition. Competitive compensation tailored to experience and sector benchmarks. Professional growth with access to high-level research, networking, and funding opportunities. Please apply at this link. You will be asked for a 1-2 page resume, a writing sample, and to answer a few short-answer questions. We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis. Applications received by March 30 will be prioritized.

We’re looking to work with a r esearcher who's excited about applying Giving Green's research methods to support biodiversity. Location: Remote (must have work authorization where you are based) Compensation: Competitive for nonprofit sector, commensurate with experience Commitment: Contract-based, likely full-time April to October but flexible for the right candidate.   Who is Giving Green? At Giving Green, our mission is to make high-impact climate giving easier for everyone. Our researchers evaluate the climate philanthropy landscape to identify highly effective nonprofits with a need for more funding—our Top Nonprofits —and a broader portfolio of work we support through the Giving Green Fund . All together, Giving Green has raised over $30 million for the climate ecosystem. We are expanding our work to identify highly effective philanthropic strategies to protect and preserve biodiversity, with the support of a philanthropic partner.   Who are we looking for? We'd love someone willing to roll up their sleeves and become a part of the research team. You will be conducting literature reviews, digging through data, developing quantitative models, speaking with experts, and more.   You will be following Giving Green's research process , but against the outcome of biodiversity. Your high-level deliverables will be: Creation of a " research dashboard " for biodiversity, comparing many philanthropic strategies at a high level, including development of metrics on which to compare strategies Completion of 20-30 page deep dive report assessing several high-potential philanthropic strategies Longlist of promising charities identified as working on these philanthropic strategies Evaluations of about 3-5 charities from longlist   Desired qualifications: General qualifications Bachelor's degree; advanced degrees preferred but not required. Excellent oral and written communication skills in English. Ability to work independently, develop your own work timelines and products, and take initiative on a small team. Prior experience in related fields, e.g.: Biodiversity or conservation work, especially with a focus on systems-level interventions like policy advocacy and economic development. Philanthropy, charity evaluation, or other monitoring & evaluation work. Experience with desk-based research, e.g.: Writing formal reports for general and expert audiences, especially writing about technical or quantitative topics. Conducting and writing literature reviews or shorter synthesis reports. Quantitative modeling, e.g. spreadsheet-based cost-effectiveness analyses. Ability to be highly transparent with reasoning and to quickly identify and act on decision-relevant questions.   Nuts and bolts: Giving Green is currently incubated by IDinsight, a global data analytics and advisory firm. Your contract will be with IDinsight. We are a fully remote team. Candidates must have legal authorization to work in the country in which they will be based. Rates will be competitive for the non-profit sector, based on the location and experience of the applicant.   We want to make a major difference in the movement to stop climate change, and you could play a crucial role in advancing our mission.   Apply here. We are simply looking for a resume and writing sample, but you may attach a proposal if desired.   Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. ​