Voluntary Emission Reduction

Voluntary emission reduction actions allow you to take advantage of voluntary efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by following certain regulations and standards.
Purpose
Cutting emissions under the voluntary emission scheme will guarantee the quality of your reductions and ensure that they are generated as credible, tradable and recognisable greenhouse gas offsets or credits. DNV will act as your verifier to help ensure that you achieve your reduction objectives.
Voluntary emission reductions are reductions that are not mandated by any law or regulation, but originate from an organisation’s desire to take active part in climate change mitigation efforts. This may enable the organisation to be recognised as a proactive advocate for new technologies and approaches in this area.
Benefits
The voluntary carbon market is now growing because companies, government bodies, non-governmental organisations, and others that are often not subject to binding greenhouse gas regulations wish to:
- Make a quantifiable contribution to reduce emissions
- Increase response options and flexibility of carbon management
- Enhance public relations
- Generate goodwill by entering the carbon market
- Cement strategic interest in specific offset projects
- Manage corporate social responsibility commitments
- Become carbon neutral and/or sell carbon neutral products and services
- Real: All emission reductions must be proven to have genuinely taken place to qualify as voluntary carbon units.
- Measurable: All emission reductions that are proposed for verification as voluntary carbon units must use recognised methodologies and techniques for quantification.
- Permanent: In order to offset emissions released elsewhere, it is essential that any voluntary carbon units represent permanent emission reductions and are not likely to be reversed.
- Additional: A key factor in the validity of a project based emission reduction is that it should be additional ie, result in a lower emission level than would otherwise be the case.
- Independently verified: All emission reductions proposed for certification as voluntary carbon units must be verified by an approved independent third party verifier such as DNV.
The verification includes review of:
- Results and data collection systems linked to emission reductions
- Established practices and the accuracy of data collected, as well as monitoring equipment
- The management system supporting the reported emission reductions