About Us

Credible Carbon is a registry that sells credits from projects that are independently audited against carbon market standards that have been approved by the UNFCCC. We pride ourselves on creating a transparent and robust carbon trading system that gets as much money as possible to projects that are part of South Africa’s climate change solution.

Avoiding carbon-emitting activities is your key (and first) responsibility; but when emissions are unavoidable, buying an offset from an emission reduction project can make reducing greenhouse gas emissions affordable. Credible Carbon offsets also improve the living conditions for people in South Africa because we only register projects that help alleviate poverty.

Helping companies think differently

Credible Carbon Standard

Every Credible Carbon project is independently audited and has to comply with the Credible Carbon Standard.

We understand that the principals in a carbon market are the buyers and the sellers, we are simply a necessary transaction cost. As such we aim to make our process as streamlined as possible without compromising market integrity or the fungibility of our credits.

The standard is simple and requires projects to answer four grounding questions:

Credible Carbon Projects

We think that the answers to the FOUR BIG QUESTIONS provide buyers with the type and quality of information that they require about Credible Carbon’s offsets. The result is a set of projects that comply with our aim and vision for this market: Real projects, real people, real benefits (we don’t trade business plans!), and emission reduction plus poverty alleviation.

We pride ourselves that across our projects at least 60% of net carbon revenue is returned to the project beneficiaries as cash or reinvestment. In the period 2008 to 2023 we managed beat this target and returned an average of 80% of carbon revenue to projects, after audit fees, legal costs and registry fees.

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Credible Carbon is a registry that was designed to support projects (not itself!) and constantly seeks to reduce the transaction costs for small, poverty alleviating projects that also reduce greenhouse gas emissions using internationally recognised methodologies recognised such as those used by the Clean Development Mechanism, Gold Standard and Verra.

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Credible Carbon’s volume of traded credits has grown from 9 000 tCO₂; in 2011 to an average of 90 000 tCO₂ per year up to 2023. Carbon credit prices have ranged from R36 per tCO₂ to R140 per tCO₂ depending on scale and the nature of the project.

Our Audit Process

All our projects are audited using methodologies recognised by VCS, CDM and others; however we apply simpler, voluntary carbon market processes rather than those used by VCS and the like . Our audits are conducted by independent and recognised entities, typically last four days, always involve a site visit and beneficiary interviews, and cost between 10 and 100 times less than the alternatives. Past audits have been conducted by the University of Cape Town’s Energy Research Centre, The Green House, SouthSouthNorth, Urban Earth and Carbon Calculated. All of whom have a recognised reputation in the industry and a valuable track-record associated with uncompromising rigour.

Technical Board

To ensure that Credible Carbon remains a global exemplar of how carbon market can support climate justice we have appointed our inaugural technical board members: Brenda Martin and Susan Njoroge. The need for a Technical Advisory Board stems from the evolving governance of carbon markets
and the imperative toof ensure that carbon standards and registries remain accountable to the broader goal of reducing climate change risks and supporting climate resilient development.