Frequently Asked Questions
Biodiversity credits
All our partners have charitable status and their MOU with us dictates they must spend those funds on delivery of the described conservation action. Our annual impact reports for CBAC show exactly where the money has gone and the outcomes delivered.
90%, the rest goes to Carbonz for opperationalising the CBAC.
We only fund well-established projects where more than 50% of the funding already comes from another source with a high probability of continuity.
Yes every CBAC has GPS coordinates associated with it so you can see exactly where your biodiversity impact is and the area your funds are having an impact.
Each CBAC set of GPS coordinates that is owned, is linked to the outcome of the CBAC. I.E. We upload the same GPS coordinates to both types of CBAC (type A and type B) and you hold the beneficial ownership over the restoration action associated with that CBAC for each site. For example, if you buy a CBAC A, you are funding the establishment of a trap of a specific site and protection for one year, and if you buy CBAC B, you are funding the subsequent upkeep for that trap or another site associated with a type A CBAC.
The CBAC is a more pragmatic way to restore biodiversity with high efficacy. Rather than coming up with a metric to quantify biodiversity outcomes from a project and trading them, the CBAC funds the initial action. A considerable administration/ consulting cost can be used up in outcome verification that doesn’t contribute to additional biodiveristy. All our CBAC projects are of high quality so have high biodiversity outcomes which enables a greater portion of funding to go to the project. In addition, funding the action rather than the outcomes provides the finance up front for landowners to protect biodiversity and there is no need for bridge finance. Carbonz wants to make sure every dollar goes as far as possible towards real on the ground impact.
We are adding value around traceability, authentification, validation and development of CBAC projects we want to make sure funds are going as far as possible to impact. For this Carbonz takes a 10% of the transaction fee. This is the highest efficacy biodiversity credit we know of globally.
Our projects follow best practice Science and conservation practice as recommended by the Department of Conservation. For example for our Whio project there is one trap every 100m up a single side of the river, which is widely accepted best practice across the country. This is a best practice that has been informed by years of Whio protection projects. This formula has been used extensively throughout the country with the Tongariro River, Ruahine Whio Protectors, Sika Foundation and many department of conservation projects proving this method to be very effective in supporting Whio to breed. The volunteers who work on these projects have worked on and helped establish a vast array of projects around the country and have brought that collective knowledge to the projects we are supporting through the CBAC.
Carbon credits
A carbon credit is a financial instrument that represents the equivalent of one tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2). Carbon credits are issued to projects (e.g. forestry, renewable energy, technology) that store, avoid or reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere. Carbon credits can be purchased to offset carbon emissions or held as an investment to gain exposure to the ‘carbon price’.
The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) carbon credits called New Zealand Units (NZUs) are created by the New Zealand Government and are traded by organisations and individuals who are either participating in the scheme or buying credits as an investment.
Voluntary carbon credits commonly referred to as voluntary carbon units (VCU) are created by developers of projects (e.g. native forestry). On CarbonZ the voluntary units traded are called native carbon crop units (CCU), because the project developer is CarbonCrop. Developers apply certain standards, to certify the project and prove the amount of emissions avoided or CO2 removed, these standards are described in a project methodology. As a result of certification, the developer or landowner is allocated the voluntary carbon credit.
Carbon credits can be awarded for projects that remove emissions from the atmosphere, like tree planting, or for emission avoidance, for example, the installation of a wind farm lowers emissions and could be awarded carbon credits.
On CarbonZ both the NZU and CCU represent the removal of one tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere, CarbonZ does not sell carbon credits for avoided emissions.
Carbon credits are issued on the basis of carbon sequestration of a specific area of property during the relevant sequestration period.
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If an adverse event has taken place which has resulted in a loss of carbon sequestration in the property attached to credits (e.g. due to forest fire, storm damage or insect activity) this may result in the credits being cancelled.
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The credit issuer maintains a buffer pool to provide some protection for this risk, in some circumstances there may be insufficient credits in the buffer pool to replace all of the affected credits, in which case the buyer will be unable to rely upon or trade such credits until replacement credits are earned as the forest recovers.
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Refer to the methodology of each carbon credit for further details.
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No; both the native NZU and CCU methodology has been designed to avoid double counting with New Zealand's national contribution and obligations under the Paris Agreement.