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Before and after: See how your climate action is making a difference

Before and after: This is how your Ecologi impact is transforming landscapes and lives.

We love a before and after shot at Ecologi. They&#8217;re an incredible way to show the impact of the projects supported by our community. Whether it’s deforested land turning back to verdant green, or solar projects springing to life, sometimes two simple images are worth a thousand words.
On this blog you’ll find snapshot images that paint pictures of the difference our supported climate projects are making, all around the world. Thank you to our community for making it all possible! 
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📍 Location: Ouarzazate, Morocco
⌛ Dates: 2015 –2020
🌱 Project: Verified Carbon Standard
🌳 Type: Solar energy

Morocco

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From a bare area of desert to a haven of clean energy. The Ouarzazate II solar project is a major milestone in Morocco&#8217;s journey towards a clean energy future. It is one of the largest concentrated solar power plants in the world and is expected to supply around 500 GWh per year to Morocco’s power grid.
The project uses thousands of concave mirrors to concentrate solar energy and generate electricity, which can be stored for up to 7 hours. This allows the project to continue generating electricity even after the sun sets.
The Ouarzazate II solar project supplies electricity to nearly 2 million Moroccans and will prevent emissions equivalent to 300,544 tCO2e per year over its 10 year crediting period. The project has also created around 7,000 local jobs and incorporated co-projects that promote the creation of cooperatives, educational opportunities, and skills training.
Learn more about this<a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/morocco-solar"> project</a>.

📍 Location: Brodoclea, North Ayrshire, Scotland
⌛ Dates: 2018 –2021
🌱 Project: Future Forest Company
🌳 Type: Temperate reforestation

Scotland

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Nestled in North Ayrshire, Brodoclea is a sprawling 174-hectare haven of broadleaf woodland that plays host to woolly pigs, the incredible ecological restoration engineers! 
Under <a href="https://thefutureforestcompany.com/">The Future Forest Company</a>&#8216;s guidance, these pigs awaken the soil seed bank, nourish soil microbiology, create space for sapling growth, reduce competition, and form pondlets for breeding amphibians and invertebrates. This enriches the ecosystem, offering sustenance for birds and materials for nests. 
Since 2018, the Ecologi community has helped make a significant impact on this site, funding the planting of 56,170 trees, with a focus on native broadleaf species including oak and birch, creating important habitat for local invertebrate and bird species.

📍 Location: Belavenika, Madagascar.
⌛ Dates: 2019 –2022
🌱 Project: Eden Reforestation Projects
🌳 Type: Mangrove reforestation

Madagascar

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Madagascar’s mangroves are amazing habitats that, sadly, have been deforested over the years and become degraded. This project is one of three currently being supported by the Ecologi community that are replanting mangroves in Madagascar to bring benefits to local biodiversity and communities.
Creating new sustainable income streams for local people is a key component of the project, as is female empowerment. The project employs an average of 85 people per month, with female employees making up approximately 37.5% of the workforce in 2022.
As a result of their involvement in this project, local people are now able to purchase more nutritious food, leading to improved health, and can afford to send their children to school.
To date, the Ecologi community has funded 7.9 million trees on this site in north-west Madagascar.
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📍 Location: Marotaola, Madagascar.
⌛ Dates: 2019 –2022
🌱 Project: Eden Reforestation Projects
🌳 Type: Mangrove reforestation

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This was the very first project we supported, so it holds a special place in our hearts. Seeing its progress over the last four years has brought us so much joy! 
Native mangrove species are being planted on this site, including Avicennia marina, Rhizophora mucronata, and Ceriops tagal. To date, the Ecologi community has funded the planting of over 10 million trees here, and there’s room for another million. 
This site is particularly fascinating as the mangroves are only separated from the open ocean by a thin strip of sand about 100m wide. Despite being more exposed to the ocean, mangroves that have successfully become established are growing well, creating an important habitat for coastal biodiversity and protecting the coastline from erosion by the waves.
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📍 Location: Vĩnh Hảo, Tuy Phong District, Bình Thuận, Vietnam
⌛ Dates: 2018 –2023
🌱 Project: Verified Carbon Standard
☀️ Type: Solar

Vietnam

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Vietnam&#8217;s demand for energy has been rising sharply since the 1990s, and it’s a demand that the country has struggled to fulfil, with an overreliance on coal and frequent power outages.
This project, in the Vinh Hao commune, Vietnam, is generating electricity using photovoltaic technology, which transforms sunlight into electricity. The project is on around 60ha of salt farm, and will generate 83,750MWh of power annually.
Local people have been involved throughout the design phase and operation of the project. The construction process of the project was carefully managed to minimise the impact on the local environment. During the operation of the project, pollution will also be minimised through a series of measures, including ensuring no littering takes place, and waste materials will be responsibly disposed of off-site.
Over the 10-year crediting period, the project will prevent 704,110tCO2e from being emitted by replacing energy in the grid that would otherwise have come from fossil fuels.
The project has given a real boost to the living standards of local communities through economic support funds: the commune gratitude fund in the Vinh Hao commune, and the learning promotion fund in the Binh Thuan province.
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📍 Location: Mount Elgon, Uganda. 
⌛ Dates: 2021 – 2023
🌱 Project: Trees for the Future
🌳 Type: Reforestation and sustainable agroforestry

Uganda

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Trees for the Future’s innovative Forest Gardens approach is all about engaging farmers in reforestation and sustainable agroforestry. The farmers take part in a 4-year programme, learning the skills they need to better manage their land. This brings multiple benefits, including protected crops, stabilised soils, and habitats for pollinators, as well as increasing household incomes.
Over the past two years, the Ecologi community has funded the planting of 766,663 trees in Forest Gardens through this project. Three hundred farmers (57% of whom are women) are involved, with 3,522 people benefitting from the project so far. 
Pictured is 56-year-old Philister Khana, a farmer enrolled in the programme. In just two years she’s taken the number of trees on her plot from 4 to 2,001!
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Ready to make a difference for our planet? Get in touch, and let’s chat about how we can help you on your climate journey. 

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Hopescrolling: The good news timeline

It’s not all bad. While there’s a lot of negative news about the climate, let’s not forget the good stuff. Find climate wins, reasons to be hopeful and plenty of positivity in our good news timeline.

The good news timeline

In Depth

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Just as we make sure all our reforestation projects are designed in a way that is most beneficial to our planet, our other terrestrial restoration projects need to be of the highest quality too. Wildflower, Wetlands and Wildlife projects have the potential to provide vital support to a wide array of species, boosting local, national and international biodiversity, as well as being an important and secure carbon store. But for these benefits to come to fruition the projects must be implemented properly, in line with best practices.
We know you might have some questions about this new type of project, so we’ve put together answers to some FAQs to help you learn more about our Wildflower, Wetlands and Wildlife project.

Your questions answered

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Which carbon credits can you really trust? What you need to know.

Businesses on their sustainability journey need to focus on two key areas: primarily reducing their direct emissions within their own operations, and secondly, funding high-quality climate action alongside reduction efforts. 
But what does high-quality climate action look like? And how can a business ensure their carbon credits fall into this category? In this blog we&#8217;ll unpack how you can spot the good from the bad and make sure you&#8217;re funding climate action projects that genuinely support the restoration of our planet.

<h2>What is a carbon credit? </h2>
Carbon credits work by providing funding (‘carbon finance’) to projects in exchange for activities which avoid or remove emissions from our atmosphere referred to as ‘Carbon Avoidance’ and ‘Carbon Removal’ credits.
Each carbon credit represents the avoidance or removal of one metric tonne of greenhouse gas emissions. However, not all carbon credits are created equal. Some are much higher-quality than others.

<h2>Are carbon credits worthless?</h2>
The voluntary carbon market has been criticised in recent months due to concerns over some projects failing to achieve their stated carbon avoidance or removal aims, or project developers engaging in bad practices on the ground.
Does this mean that all carbon credits are worthless? 
No, not at all. 
Like all markets, there are carbon credits that are low quality, but there are also high-quality carbon credits that finance real, verifiable emissions avoidance and reductions. 
The increased public and media scrutiny of carbon credits has also led to much-needed reform and regulation. The Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) recently released a long-awaited framework that provides guidance on defining what makes carbon credits of high quality:

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<h2>Which carbon standard should you choose?</h2>
Carbon credits are issued to projects by carbon standards, which are organisations that set criteria for how projects can earn credits. There are several carbon standards, and each one has its own set of criteria.
At Ecologi, we work with three carbon standards: 
<ul>
<li><a href="https://verra.org/programs/verified-carbon-standard/">Verified Carbon Standard</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.goldstandard.org/">Gold Standard</a></li>
<li><a href="https://puro.earth/puro-standard-carbon-removal-credits/">Puro Standard</a></li>
</ul>

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Each of these standards has its own criteria for issuing carbon credits, which are based on their own proprietary methodologies:
Gold Standard certification assesses projects based on their contributions to <a href="https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals/no-poverty?gclid=CjwKCAjwt52mBhB5EiwA05YKoy7Pa0XlSZU_xtRkM6u32Wz-w7vB9mOSV9_LToNVZrl6dSfR1agkpBoCzLgQAvD_BwE">the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)</a>, as well as emissions avoidance or removal. These certified SDG co-benefits are part of the Gold Standard credit issuance process. For example, with the <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/burn-cookstoves-kenya">Kenya cookstoves project</a> we recently supported, the certified SDG impacts are indicated by <a href="https://registry.goldstandard.org/projects/details/1559">the colourful SDG logos</a> on the Gold Standard Registry.
Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) in contrast to Gold Standard certification, does not certify SDG co-benefits &#8211; but there are additional certifications by Verra which verify these. These certifications include the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard (CCBS) and the Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SDVista) certifications. For example, <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/protecting-rainforest-in-a-wildlife-sanctuary-in-cambodia">the Southern Cardamom project</a> has achieved both. The SDG logos can be seen on the project&#8217;s <a href="https://registry.verra.org/app/projectDetail/VCS/1748">Registry page</a>, in the SDVista section.
Puro Standard is a dedicated standard for carbon removal credits &#8211; that is, those credits which actively absorb existing emissions out of the atmosphere through natural or technological processes. To date, there are only a few active methodologies under Puro, because carbon removal is a relatively new field. Within Puro certification, co-benefits are also accounted for, as you can see with <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/carbon-hill-biochar">the Carbon Hill biochar project</a>, which lists several additional co-benefits alongside the actual carbon removal, on <a href="https://puro.earth/CORC-co2-removal-certificate/carbon-hill-100179">its Puro Registry page</a>.

<h2>How do carbon credit methodologies work?</h2>
Each carbon standard has its own set of certification criteria. This means that carbon credits issued to Gold Standard (called ‘VERs’ &#8211; ‘verified emissions reductions’) and those issued to the Verified Carbon Standard (‘VCUs’ &#8211; ‘verified carbon units’) are nominally equivalent, but not actually identical.
The good news is that carbon standards are very transparent about their criteria. They publish all the important material on their websites, so you can easily compare the different standards and methodologies so you can choose the one that is right for you.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.goldstandard.org/project-developers/standard-documents">Gold Standard methodologies</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://verra.org/methodologies-main/">Verified Carbon Standard methodologies</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://puro.earth/carbon-removal-methods/">Puro Standard methodologies</a></li>
</ul>

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<h2>How is quality assessed? </h2>
The usual criteria for assessing carbon credit quality are:
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<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Baseline: How the project was assessed for a background level of emissions, against which avoidance or removal can be measured.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Additionality: The project activity is &#8220;additional,&#8221; meaning that the emissions avoidance or removal would not have happened otherwise. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Leakage: The project does not cause excess emissions elsewhere. This means that the project does not lead to an increase in emissions in another part of the world.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Permanence: The emissions avoidance or removal is permanent. This means that the emissions prevention or removal should be sustained over time. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Co-benefits: The project contributes other co-benefits, such as contributing toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This means that the project should have positive impacts on other areas, such as social or environmental factors.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Going ‘beyond’ the standards</h2>
The usual criteria above for assessing carbon credit quality are a great starting point, but there are plenty of other ways that Ecologi assesses the quality of carbon credits. 
For us the three main standards are just the start.  
We also ask 6 key questions:
1. Where is the credit coming from? The ideal life cycle of a carbon credit is as short as possible, with a direct journey from the project developer to the buyer who wants to retire it. If a carbon credit has been traded repeatedly without being retired, then it is likely that there have been many middlemen who have profited from these trades. In this case, the project developer (the ones doing the hard work on the ground) will have only seen a small percentage of the final purchase price.
2. Is the project strategically beneficial? We maintain regionalised strategies for both carbon avoidance and carbon removal projects. These strategies consider which types of project can have the most impact in different locations around the world, as well as where there is currently a lack of project funding. The intersection between a high potential benefit and current lack of funding is the sweet spot where the opportunity for impact is greatest.

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3. How old is the vintage? The “vintage” of a carbon credit refers to when the emissions avoidance or removal took place. Credit methodologies improve over time, so newer vintages of carbon credits are likely to represent more strictly measured, higher-quality credits. At Ecologi, we aim to buy credits that are less than 5 years old, as we believe that this ensures that we are supporting the highest-quality projects.
4. Are there project-specific concerns? Renewable energy projects can have challenges with additionality, since governments often legislate for new renewable energy capacity. This means that the project may not actually reduce emissions, as it would have been built anyway. To avoid this, we check the energy mixes and political conditions locally before funding renewable energy projects. This helps us to understand whether the project is likely to be additional or not.
5. Are there location-specific concerns? We also consider the location of a project to understand the natural and man-made risks that could affect it. For example, we use the <a href="https://drmkc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/inform-index/INFORM-Risk/Results-and-data/moduleId/1782/id/453/controller/Admin/action/Results">INFORM Risk Index</a>, an open-source risk assessment project from the European Commission, to assess national-level risks and coping capacities for all UN states. Projects in countries with lower risk scores are likely to be safer from these kinds of risks, which include natural hazards like earthquakes, human hazards like war and conflict, and coping capacity challenges like poor infrastructure and weak institutions.
6. Is the project highly ranked by independent third parties? We use the carbon intelligence platform, Sylvera, to assess the progress of projects and whether they are achieving their stated aims. This is particularly useful for nature-based projects, where we use Sylvera&#8217;s geospatial data to view estimates of deforestation rates and carbon storage within the project boundary. Sylvera has three tiers of project rankings, and we only fund projects that are ranked in the top tier. This gives us an even deeper insight into how projects are performing and helps us to ensure that we are supporting the highest-quality projects.

<h2>Who can you trust?</h2>
Ecologi understands that the carbon markets can be complex. It’s very hard for even knowledgeable businesses to navigate. While it is impossible to guarantee the success of all projects, there are concrete steps all businesses can take to maximise the selection of high-quality projects. 
Ecologi helps businesses take these steps to make good, informed choices about which projects to support. We will only ever support high-quality projects that meet our strict criteria. We are committed to transparency, which is why we never re-trade carbon credits (we only retire them ourselves) and publish all carbon credit retirements on our <a href="https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/adfb141d-4153-4c22-b6b4-976f7f3930b2/page/p_9zis9oxt3c">Public Impact Ledger</a>.

<h3>Read Our guide to funding high-quality carbon credits</h3>
<div class="ecologi-video-full-width"><iframe src="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20230914115954/Document_Ad_Funding_Carbon_Credits_01-1.pdf" width="960" height="1080" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
 📁 Download the guide <a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20230914115954/Document_Ad_Funding_Carbon_Credits_01-1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>

Before and after: See how your climate action is making a difference

Morocco

Scotland

Madagascar

Madagascar

Vietnam

Uganda

Ready to make a difference for our planet? Get in touch, and let’s chat about how we can help you on your climate journey.

More posts

Hopescrolling: The good news timeline

Your questions answered about our Wildflowers, Wetlands and Wildlife project

Which carbon credits can you really trust? Here’s what you need to know.

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