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Environment & Climate vocabulary · Emissions and Carbon

Carbon credit

Meaning in environment & climate, with examples

/ˈkɑːrbən ˈkredɪt/nounCommon term

In environment & climate, carbon credit means: A tradable certificate representing one tonne of CO2e that a certified project has reduced, avoided or removed from the atmosphere.

In Turkish: karbon kredisi

How it is used

Credits are issued, bought, sold and retired, which means cancelled so they cannot be used again. Most are traded in the voluntary carbon market under standards such as Verra and Gold Standard; Article 6 of the Paris Agreement covers trading between countries. Buyers look at quality, additionality and permanence.

Example sentences

  1. The wind farm sells carbon credits certified under the Gold Standard.

  2. We retired 5,000 carbon credits to cover the emissions from last year's business travel.

Common collocations

  • buy carbon credits
  • retire carbon credits
  • voluntary carbon market
  • high-quality carbon credits
  • issue credits
  • carbon offsetA reduction or removal of emissions somewhere else, such as in a forestry or clean cookstove project, that an organization pays for to compensate for its own emissions.
  • emissions trading system (ETS)A market-based scheme that sets a cap on total emissions and lets companies buy and sell allowances, each giving the right to emit one tonne of CO2 or its equivalent.
  • carbon neutralDescribing an organization, product or event whose net carbon emissions over a period are zero, usually because the emissions that remain are balanced with carbon credits.
  • net zeroA state in which the greenhouse gases a country or company still emits, after deep emission cuts, are balanced by the same amount being removed from the atmosphere.

More terms: Emissions and Carbon

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