Gigatonne Super Credits

The Gigatonne Super Credit is a new type of next-generation high-integrity carbon credit.

Super credits are used to support effective climate action[1] meeting three sets of requirements:

(1) Fair - providing jobs, food security and energy security to families in the bottom 20%

(2) Rapid - operating at a pace dictated by science based targets

(3) Effective - undertaking actions that directly reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions

We have been testing the approach for over 24 months in 94 cities across the world.

Super credits are high-integrity for multiple reasons. They provide the highest levels of transparency and accountability, while supporting rapid, fair and effective climate action.

Our standards for effective climate action are formalized in the Open Gigatonne Protocol. We specify seven performance levels, with targets for time, emissions reduction/removal [CO2e] and equity targets [number of families supported via employment, food and energy security].

The direct beneficiaries of Super Credits are those in the bottom 20% socioeconomic bracket globally. They will directly benefit from jobs, food security and energy security, financed by the sale of Gigatonne Super credits.

There are two verification processes.

For the purposes of credit verification, the Open Reporting Platform will provide a centralised data source providing an effective single data access point for audit and reducing the time for credit verification.

Based on the Gigatonne Purchase agreement: super credits are sold at $1000 per credit (including the verification process and access to audit level data) and Gigatonne teams get paid $200 per credit

Prices for carbon credits are very low, resulting in a lack of efficacy and fairness. A low price also means that much of the work financed by carbon credits is ineffective. A recent investigation by the Guardian made the case that 90% of nature based credits, verified by Verra, the largest carbon credit registry in the world, were worthless.

This low price of carbon credits also primarily hurts the most vulnerable people in the world. Sub-$100 credits do not cover the living wages of the poorest people in the world, many of whom are employed to manage the work on the ground. This means that carbon credits are not financing fair or effective climate action.

Adjusting the price of carbon credits to ensure work is effective and fair is imperative if we are to actually tackle the climate crisis. Gigatonne Super Credits are designed to meet the real costs of effectively tackling greenhouse gas emissions. They are priced fairly - if we want our climate actions to be effective.

The pricing of voluntary carbon credits can vary greatly depending on the source and type of project generating the credits. Factors include the type of project, location, size and scale, and level of assurance provided by certification bodies. Carbon offset providers and exchanges set their own prices for the credits they offer.

Carbon credits are seen as a key transitional tool to speed up climate action and instigate faster emissions reductions by the UN. However many projects offer little to no additionality with questionable permanence especially in the forestry sector (approximately 42% of carbon credits are generated from forestry projects with no guarantee the trees will survive to maturity when they are considered to begin having a positive impact). Whilst carbon credits sell between 2 USD and 2000 USD the majority sell for between 2-20 USD and tend to have a cost focus rather than a clear and robust strategy based on temporal abatement or equity. At the top end of the market the underlying projects are high tech GHG removal projects with low volume.

As demand grows for carbon credits there are calls for improvements in quality and standardised regulation within the market and a shift towards “high integrity” credits with quality cited as the most significant near term challenge of the voluntary carbon credits markets. Supply of high integrity or ‘super credits’ is low due to verification and accounting challenges and inconsistent definitions of co-benefits.

The GSC supply chain requires two agreements to be put in place, the Gigatonne Supplier Agreement (GSA) and the Gigatonne Purchase Agreement (GPA).

The registration and issuance process will be performed by Verra alongside further responsibility for all inventory management of GSC’s generated by 10in10 in the short term. A future deliverable in a later phase is the creation of a proprietary verification model which will enable a shorter and more rapid 6 month verification process that can be executed by third parties. GSCs will be offered for sale in advance solely based on abatement provided by teams with a track record of having reached Level 3.

The direct beneficiaries of Super Credits are those in the bottom 20% socioeconomic bracket globally. They will directly benefit from jobs, food security and energy security, financed by the sale of Gigatonne Super credits.

Our platform will ensure that all benefits, and associated finances, are entirely transparent. In the next few years we aim to work with 1,000 teams around the world, located in different climate flashpoints. These 1,000 teams will work on building climate resilient communities.

Our goal is to catalyze a $200 billion a year market in super credits, of which a small percentage will be Gigatonne Super Credits. This market will result in abating one Gigatonne or one billion tonnes of CO2e emissions per year, while supporting over one billion of the world’s poorest people.