Rubicon Carbon Develops New Risk-Adjusted Approach for Creating High Integrity Carbon Credits

New framework applies ongoing risk adjustments to the portfolio of carbon projects backing its proprietary Rubicon Carbon Tonne (RCT℠) product

MARINA DEL REY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rubicon Carbon, a next generation carbon solutions provider, today released a white paper detailing a novel risk adjustment framework for new and legacy carbon credits. The framework is designed to create high integrity carbon credits and drive confidence in the voluntary carbon markets by addressing current issues such as overcrediting risk, future delivery risk, and other risk factors that impact credit quality.

The white paper, A risk adjustment approach for creating high integrity carbon credits, was authored by Rubicon Carbon’s Chief Science Officer Dr. Jennifer Jenkins, Research Manager Dr. Brian Clough, and Rubicon Carbon CEO Tom Montag. It is available for download here.

“Carbon credit buyers need to know that each credit they acquire actually represents one tonne of carbon kept out of, or removed from, the atmosphere,” said Dr. Jenkins. “However, credits are exposed to different risks that make their environmental benefits challenging to estimate, especially over time. Current carbon credit methodologies account for too little of the uncertainty that these risks introduce. Leveraging portfolio-backed carbon credits like Rubicon Carbon Tonnes, we have developed an ongoing risk adjustment framework to first assess the gap between the number of registered carbon credits and our estimate of the actual tonnes of carbon credits we and our buyers have invested in and then retire more credits than are actually used as offsets.”

“A market of this scale and utility needs to evolve rapidly to maintain trust and confidence. Not only do buyers need confidence in the new credits coming to market, but they need confidence in the ones they currently own,” said Montag. “Technology-enabled monitoring and forecasting have improved significantly over the years, which allows us to properly account for the number of credits that need to be retired to compensate for different sources of risk. Backing our risk-adjusted credits with a diversified portfolio of carbon projects further reduces risk for buyers and creates a framework for producing fungible carbon credits – in our case RCTs– with an intended value of one actual, on-the-ground tonne of carbon benefit. Importantly, the framework is designed to extend beyond Rubicon’s product set to buyers and suppliers across the broader market and applied to any existing or future carbon credit.”

For more information about the white paper, please contact: [e-mail]

For more information about Rubicon Carbon, visit www.rubiconcarbon.com or @RubiconCarbon on Twitter.