About Carbon Credits
CO2ign Art uses carbon credits as a way for the global art community to contribute to fighting climate change at a large scale.
How are carbon credits used?
Companies tend to purchase credits in order to “offset” their own emissions. This funding helps projects that are not otherwise financially appealing to happen. In that way, even if it’s impossible or cost-prohibitive for a company to reduce their own carbon emissions to zero, they can balance them out and bring their overall impact on the atmosphere to zero. In some cases, this is done to meet government regulation, but this can also be “voluntary”: done solely to help the environment, or to meet a public commitment to “net-zero.”
Individuals can also buy carbon credits from certain retailers in order to offset their own “carbon footprint” from activities like airline flights and general consumption. However, calculating emissions at an individual level is questionable—how much are you personally responsible for the gas used shipping that tomato you ate from Mexico?—and it’s often unclear where the money is going, so companies currently purchase the vast majority of credits.
Do carbon credits really help the environment?
Carbon credits will unquestionably be an important part of limiting the impact of climate change. Voluntary carbon credits have historically been a small market with inconsistent quality, but that is changing quickly. With resolutions made recently at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), new benchmarks and standards are emerging to help carbon credits be more easily traded, and ensure that measured carbon reduction is real. Limiting global warming will require as much growth as possible: the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets estimates the market needs to grow by at least 15x by 2030.
CO2ign Art currently sources credits from Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard, the largest independent organization verifying carbon credits, and one of the few issuing credits that meet UN standards for global airlines to count as offsets. We will continue to hold carbon credits to high standards as they develop.
Does buying CO2ign art really make a difference?
Buying CO2ign Art is a positive, proactive act to help the environment, not simply an attempt to offset individual impact.
In addition to the direct benefits to specific projects, CO2ign Art aims to create pressure in the voluntary carbon market overall. By increasing demand, carbon credits will increase in price, which will both make carbon-reduction projects more lucrative—meaning more of them will start—and make it more expensive for companies with net-zero promises to meet them via offsetting—meaning they will focus more on reducing their emissions directly.
CO2ign Art uses carbon credits as a way for the global art community to rally together and contribute to fighting climate change at a large scale.
