Consumer Offset Quality
What makes Kyoto Twist a good choice for purchasing your carbon offsets?
Our goal is to provide the highest quality carbon offset available in the voluntary sector. Clean Air–Cool Planet, a non-profit organization based in northeastern U.S. that promotes solutions to global warming, in 2006, published A Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers. This report contains an excellent introduction to the retail offsets market and has a retail offsets glossary. Thirty providers of carbon offsets were evaluated from around the world with the seven criteria that you see listed below. Kyoto Twist seeks to meet the report’s criteria for a quality offset. Here we discuss the report’s seven quality-criteria and what the Kyoto Twist does to meet them.
1. PROVIDERS’ PRIORITIZATION OF OFFSET QUALITY
The Kyoto Twist believes that solar cooker projects are an important way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, these projects provide many ancillary benefits listed in number 6 below. Solar cookers replace and/or greatly reduce the need for firewood, charcoal, fossil fuels, and other biomass used throughout the world for cooking. Our projects so far have not been of a scale to participate in the formal carbon markets, but we earnestly try to stay abreast of current standards and methodologies in those markets and adhere to as many of their criteria as possible.
2. BUYERS’ ABILITY TO TRANSPARENTLY EVALUATE OFFSET QUALITY
Through our website and our project reports we aim to show how much care and diligence goes into each project. Our project application and guidelines are used to screen for the best possible partners to carry out selection of participants, training, monitoring and follow-up evaluations. These projects are carried out in areas with poor communications and rigorous living conditions. We work with experienced groups who have worked in the solar cooker movement and have great knowledge of how to work in the culture of their host communities and with local partners. We strive to manage projects at a cost of $10.00 US per tonne. In the voluntary credit sector, this is an excellent value.
3. TRANSPARENCY IN PROVIDER OPERATIONS AND OFFSET SELECTION
Our track record is posted on our website through our “Projects” page. We report on the general project structure and when the project is completed we add data which shows fuel usage before and after implementation of the project and the tonnes of CO2 and family fuel budget saved. We pay no salaries in our home office. Our administrative cost is less than 5% of our revenue, which all goes to projects that help families and give jobs to the local promoters and trainers. Our financial records are available for view to anyone on the Canada Revenue Agency website:
www.cra-arc.gc.ca/charities, registration # 817412273RR0001.
4. PROVIDER’S UNDERSTANDING OF THE TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF OFFSET QUALITY
Kyoto Twist carbon offsets are carried out using the criteria for the voluntary carbon market in every way possible and cost-effective for each project. Credits are counted only one time- never double counted. Additionality is one of the criteria. This means that a given project would not have happened in any other way (i.e. through government programs or other programs already planned or underway). Permanence is addressed in that, as with any technology, the offset lasts only as long as the solar cooker is being used. Since solar cookers have a range of life expectancy (from 2 to 25 years), Kyoto Twist uses a formula to take into consideration their use by year, what we call the “Family Solar Cooking Year”. The best report we have found so far on the specific parameters for cooking projects was written by Adam Harvey on the Gold Standard.org website under ‘projects’ and is titled, Methodology for Improved Cook-stoves and Kitchen Regimes.
5. PRIORITY ASSIGNED BY PROVIDER TO EDUCATING CONSUMERS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND GLOBAL WARMING POLICY
Global warming is accelerating at a rate that threatens the environment, which supports life on this planet. The Kyoto Twist has listed sites and resources for you to become better educated on the causes and possible responses to our runaway use of carbon-based fuels. The Kyoto Twist is one response to the carbon emission mitigation strategies we can use in combinations to address the progression of global warming. We repeat often that offsetting is not a substitute for individuals, families, institutions and industries who need to make reductions in their carbon footprints.
6. ANCILLARY ENVIRONMENTAL AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT BENEFITS OF OFFSET PORTFOLIOS
Solar cookers are an excellent way to both reduce GHGs and provide additional benefits:
*health-
Reduction of respiratory illnesses, burns, eye diseases, and water-bourne pathenogenic diseases with water pasteurization in the solar cooker.
*economic-
Improves balance of trade with the reduced need for imported fossil fuels for electrical grids and direct cooking. Families can use savings on fuel cost for health needs, education, food, and housing.
*environment-
Decreases the rate of deforestation due to providing wood and charcoal for cooking fuel. Saves needed fruit and nut trees from being used as fuel. Helps prevent desertification and displacement and loss of plant and animal species.
In addition, solar cooker implementation addresses every one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (see The UN Millennium Development Goals page)
7. USE OF THIRD PARTY PROTOCOLS AND CERTIFICATION
Our goal now is to validate our offsets with the assistance of peer review. We do this to maintain our partnerships and a low cost for carbon emission reductions. In the future we will look for opportunities to do projects under the auspices of the Gold Standard, Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) or the Clean Development Mechanism of the UN. We continue to look for better ways to collect and process data, as well as support the promoters in the field and the end users. With the experience we have collected, we are positioning our organization to be able to put into place larger projects of great benefit in the future as the opportunities present themselves.
Save a tonne, Save a life.
