What is the United Nations Carbon Offset Platform?
A short answer would be that the UN Carbon Offset Platform is an e-commerce platform where a company, an organization or a regular citizen can purchase units (carbon credits) to compensate greenhouse gas emissions or to simply support action on climate.
However, the platform is more than that. Let us explain.
Calculate your carbon footprint
The first step of climate action is awareness: it is only once you know what your footprint is that you will be able to take appropriate action to reduce it. To help you estimate your emissions, we offer several tailored calculators to suit different needs:
Firstly, directly on the UN Carbon Offset Platform, you can find the carbon footprint calculator. This calculator is designed as a simple questionnaire for individuals. By providing details about your activities, you will receive an estimate of your individual emissions (i.e., your footprint).
Additionally, UN Climate Change, in partnership with the Swedish tech company Doconomy, has developed the Lifestyle Calculator for individual emissions estimation. This tool incorporates the latest methodologies and emission factors updated for 2024.
For organizations, we provide an excel based calculator to estimate an organization’s scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. This tool includes emission factors updated for 2021 and 2022.
Finally, event organizers can estimate their event’s footprint using the Green Events Tool, developed jointly by UN Climate Change, UN Environment and the Gulf Organization for Research and Development (GORD).
A versatile catalogue of projects
The main feature of this platform is to display UNFCCC-certified climate friendly projects that reduce, avoid or remove greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. These projects are implemented in developing countries around the world and are rewarded with Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) for each tonne of greenhouse gas they help reduce, avoid or remove.
CERs are units (carbon credits) issued by UNFCCC, measured in tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Anyone can purchase these units on this platform to compensate (or offset) emissions and/or to support these projects. They can be used by individuals, businesses and organizations to reach carbon neutrality by compensating their footprints, while they help project developers to continue to finance their green projects. The prices per unit are set by project developers, who also receive the full profits from the sale of the units directly: UN Climate Change is not a party to the CER cancellation contract between purchaser and provider. The platform is free of charge, for both buyers and sellers.
Such contributions also encourage the development of additional ones. They also support sustainable development in the communities where these projects are implemented, ensuring job creation and continuity, health improvements and many more co-benefits. This is why one can consider investing in these projects not only as climate action to address one’s footprint, but also as a contribution to sustainable development.
A catalogue is available for buyers to choose which project(s) they would like to get their CERs from. Projects can be sorted by country or region, by impact (environmental, social or economic) or by industry, which makes it easy for buyers to select the activities that are most relevant to them, and for companies to find those that are most in line with their sustainability strategy.
A learning platform
The UN Carbon Offset Platform is also a learning platform, where one can get familiar with the concept of offsetting emissions, what CERs are, where they come from, see explanatory videos or even interviews of those who used it and explain how and why. A clear and concise guide on how to offset is also available for first-time users, and in case these resources do not answer your questions yet, you can easily take a direct shortcut to the comprehensive FAQ section or contact the team.
