About us Ethics, Environment & Quality

Ethics and Environment

e)mission offers a high quality service for the voluntary carbon market, promoting personalised and tailored-made, and credible carbon reduction programmes and selling high quality carbon credits to our clients – individuals, companies and organisations. We do this by following the most challenging standards and guidelines and taking advice from global experts, and we compromise in offering a range of services and a brand for carbon certification that are recognisable as trustable, credible and stringent. This includes:

Consultancy and Transparency:

we use the most reputable international methodologies for carbon footprinting and we rely on fully accredited partners to conduct formal energy audits. We use an independent auditor, KPMG Portugal, to check, verify and report on our systems and processes for carbon procurement and retirement, thus guaranteeing that all our carbon credits are purchased/acquired, registered, traded and retired using a transparent and rigorous means. See Our Services for more information.

e)mission publishes a yearly report with details on its activities and its carbon accounting, that will be independently verified to ensure validity – we have chosen KPMG Portugal to validate e)mission carbon registries and reports. See Annual Report for more information on our reporting. Also you may check the Independent Limited Assurance Report done by KPMG, referring to e)mission carbon registry data for 2008-2009:

Independent Limited Assurance Report KPMG 2008/2009

Although we are not, yet, member of ICROA (International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance) – carbon reduction industry body set up to ensure rigorous standards for the industry; we follow its Code of Best Practice.

Emission reduction projects:

Our project development work follows the guidelines and criteria of the most stringent international market-leading standards: such as the Gold Standard, developed by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and the Social Carbon Standard (SCS). Wherever possible, Gold Standard accreditation is sought.

We only choose projects, developed by third-parties, to be in our portfolio that follow one of the market-leading standards: GS, VCS, pre-CDM; or that are validated and verified by accredited DOEs (Designated Operational Entities) under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

In addition, Access2 Carbon Markets ensures that all projects from our portfolio have positive and verifiable environmental, social and economic impacts of their activities in the local communities where the project has been implemented.

Access2 Carbon Markets also guarantees that for every tonne of carbon we sell, a tonne of high quality carbon credit will be delivered and subsequently retired. Also we only sell carbon credits that are already validated and verified.

We address the problem of excessive dependence on a carbon-based economy.

For more information on our emission reduction project types, standards and sustainable development benefits, see our website section on Our Projects.

Validation and verification of projects developed by e)mission:

to ensure the highest degree of rigour for our clients, project methodologies follow those approved by the UNFCCC Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board. Emission reduction projects we develop ourselves, will be wherever possible validated by the Gold Standard Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) or by official Designated Operational Entities under the UNFCCC.

Science and sustainable development:

e)mission has established an independent Environmental Steering Committee (ESC) comprising experts from leading international research institutes. This body is non-executive and has an advisory role in upholding our environmental and social standards, such as revising and advising on our work in climate change, and to provide guidelines on the scientific and technical aspects of our services
To know more on our ESC, see our website section About us > Environmental Steering Committee.

Also Access2 Carbon Markets is an active member of UNEP’s (United Nations Environment Programme) Climate Neutral Network (UNEP-CNNet) – an international, institutional initiative of UNEP which brings together countries, companies and organisations committed to taking action for the climate, and promoting excellence in the management of carbon and acting towards carbon neutrality. We became the first company among all the Portuguese-speaking countries to join this network, also we are one of the few “offsetters” to be listed on the UNEP-CNNet Resources pages.

About the UNEP-CNNet, visit: www.unep.org/climateneutral/

See Access2 Carbon Markets, Lda. member of UNEP-CNNet

Quality Assurance

At e)mission we take the quality of our work very seriously. We supply only accredited carbon credits that meet our project principles. Our projects meet the highest international standards, such as, the Gold Standard, the Voluntary Carbon Standard or a pre-CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) certification. This is why we commit with the following principles (for detailed information on these issues, please go to Projects > Principles and Standards):

1. Approved methodologies
All our projects follow methodologies developed for and approved by the expert Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

2. Industry standard guidelines
All our projects follow recognised, market leading industry standard guidelines.

3. Principles
We address the root cause of climate change when developing or choosing emissions reduction projects.

Permanence: we only sell carbon credits that are have been verified as permanent emissions reductions - permanently reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Additionality: all projects in our portfolio are additional to the “business as usual” scenario, representing a net environmental benefit - which means that these projects would not have gone ahead without carbon finance

Verified: all projects in our portfolio are independently verified and adhere to very strict standards and validation and verification methodologies

Contribution to sustainable development: we only support projects that have wider environmental, social and economic benefits, to the community, beyond climate change and emissions reductions

Double-counting: we ensure that there is no double counting of carbon credits from the projects we have in our portfolio

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