Our Principles
Quality, transparency, and the highest standards.
Our Principles
Terrapass is committed to delivering only the highest quality environmental products to our customers. We are proud to be the leading provider of carbon offsets in terms of quality and transparency, for which we have received extensive recognition. The Terrapass product integrity process includes three elements:
- Procurement Standards
- Project Due Diligence
- Independent Third-Party Audit
We adopt the highest standards
One hundred percent of our carbon offsets are verified against broadly accepted standards by independent third party verifiers. Our primary standards are the Verified Carbon Standard, Gold Standard, American Carbon Registry, CSA Group and the Climate Action Reserve. These standards ensure that you receive the highest quality offsets available.
Second, we only purchase carbon offsets that have been generated within the last 5 years or less. This ensures that our customers’ purchases support incremental carbon emission reduction and create demand for new project development.
Third, we only purchase from project types that use highly regarded and widely accepted scientific methodologies for carbon emission reduction. These project types currently include Methane Capture and Destruction, HFC/ODS Industrial Gas Destruction, Renewable Energy and Forestry.
We inspect every project
Terrapass performs our own due diligence on each project. We confirm and document important project characteristics including:
- Ownership, location, methodology, and additionality of carbon emission reductions
- History, current operating status, and total carbon offsets generated annually
- Site inspections, performance data and carbon offset calculations
- Public information including project related websites and news articles.
Our emission reductions are happening now.
All of our carbon offsets come from projects that are reducing CO2e today. Terrapass does not sell carbon offsets that depend on events far into the future, such as a forest growing to maturity or a wind farm that has not been built. Before we include any offsets in our portfolio, they have to be verified by an independent third party. In other words, an outside expert confirms that a specific quantity of emissions reductions has actually occurred. Climate change is an urgent problem, and we believe in making a measurable, quantifiable, and proven difference now.
Our carbon reductions are verified every step of the way.
Every reduction at every one of our projects gets verified by an accredited and independent third party verifier. In addition, we enlist a separate accredited and independent accounting firm to verify that we are realizing the exact number of emissions reductions for our customers in accordance with the promises we’ve made to them.
We were the first carbon offset provider in the U.S. to undergo such a review of our carbon offset sales and supply. We publish the letter issued by that accountant on our web site, so you know we get everything checked and double-checked every step of the way.
We keep our prices competitive.
Because we only source carbon credits that meet the highest standards, we simply can’t meet the prices offered by providers who do not adhere to the same quality standards. That doesn’t mean we charge premium prices though; we charge a fair price for a great product. We think our customers appreciate the value of knowing with certainty that their offset purchase is making a difference for the environment.
Our mission is to fight climate change.
Terrapass is a mission-driven business. Unlike many other businesses we have a social goal. We strive to reduce the greatest amount of carbon emissions we can. We do this through education, online tools, carbon offsets, and renewable energy.
We are passionate about fighting climate change. We believe the best way to do it is by running our business as a business, and by pushing ourselves to run a lean and efficient operation that can grow to meet the enormous challenge we face in climate change.