GLOSSARY

Carbon market, defined.

The terms you’ll meet around carbon credits, without the jargon — from additionality to vintage.

Additionality: Whether emission reductions would have happened anyway. Credits should fund action that wouldn’t occur without carbon finance.
Avoidance credit: A credit for emissions that were prevented — e.g. protecting a forest or replacing polluting cookstoves — rather than removed from the air.
Baseline: The reference scenario of what emissions would have been without the project. Credits are measured against it.
Carbon credit: A tradable certificate representing one tonne of CO₂e avoided or removed, issued by a registry after independent verification.
CO₂e: Carbon dioxide equivalent — a common unit that expresses all greenhouse gases in terms of the warming effect of CO₂.
Co-benefits: Positive impacts beyond carbon — biodiversity, health, jobs, gender equity, energy access.
CCP: Core Carbon Principles — the ICVCM’s cross-registry quality threshold for high-integrity credits.
CORC: CO₂ Removal Certificate — the durable-removal credit issued by Puro.earth.
DAC: Direct Air Capture — engineered removal of CO₂ directly from the atmosphere.
Gold Standard: A voluntary standard, founded by WWF, that certifies climate impact plus measurable sustainable-development co-benefits.
ICVCM: Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market — the body that publishes the Core Carbon Principles.
Leakage: When a project shifts emissions elsewhere instead of preventing them — e.g. logging moving to the next valley.
Named retirement: Credits retired with the customer’s name on the public registry record.
Permanence: How long stored or avoided carbon stays out of the atmosphere.
Pool retirement: Credits retired under our name with the customer noted in the memo field.
Puro.earth: A leading standard for durable, engineered carbon removal such as biochar and bio-based materials.
REDD+: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation — a forest-protection methodology.
Removal credit: A credit for CO₂ physically taken out of the atmosphere and stored, e.g. reforestation, biochar, or direct air capture.
Retirement: Permanently removing a credit from circulation so it can’t be resold or double-counted.
Scope 1 / 2 / 3: A company’s direct emissions (1), purchased energy (2), and value-chain emissions (3) — the standard reporting categories.
Serial number: The unique registry identifier that makes a credit traceable and prevents double-counting.
Vintage: The year in which the emission reduction or removal actually occurred.
VCS: Verified Carbon Standard — Verra’s programme and the most-used voluntary standard.
VCU: Verified Carbon Unit — the credit issued under Verra’s VCS, equal to one tonne of CO₂e.
Voluntary carbon market: The market where individuals and organisations offset by choice, beyond any legal requirement.