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CO2balance have pioneered the Gold Standard micro programme of activities. The first company, globally, to Register a PoA with projects now firmly established in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. We have projects soon to be established in Eritrea, Cameroon, Malaysia and Bangladesh.

Project Inclusion - benefits to you

• CO2balance offer project inclusion for most types of domestic energy efficiency, renewable energy and water treatment technologies.
• CO2balance can offer project inclusion for most countries of the world.
• The time taken to issue carbon credits is reduced, on average, by at least 50% as per GS standard guidelines.
• Costs for validation and verification are reduced by approximately 90%.
• CO2balance are able to conduct every project study required as part of the issuance cycle - ordinarily this would be handled by multiple project consultants. We pass the cost and time saving from this onto you.
• CO2balance have designed our inclusion criteria to be simple, which allows staff without familiarity in offset project terminology and processes to be trained remotely. Our simple criteria are also perfect for remote project locations with less developed IT infrastructure.
• Gold Standard sustainability monitoring criteria can be minimised or maximised, depending on client needs to either reduce cost, or improve reporting.
• No project too small and no project too large; CO2balance can develop an unlimited number of projects within our mPOA.

If you would like to apply for your project to become part of our mPOA, please read on to learn more about how the process works and to see if your project technology is viable.

Inclusion Process

Technologies covered in co2balance POAs:

• Improved biomass stoves (e.g. wood and charcoal)
• Improved fossil fuel cook stoves (e.g. coal and LPG)
• Solar cookers
• Biodigesters
• Water filtration devices (e.g. sand filters)
• Safe water supply devices (e.g. boreholes)
• Thermal insulation in cold climates
• Kerosene replacement technologies (e.g. solar lighting)
• Grid connected solar PV panels
• Off grid solar PV panels

About CO2balance microprogrammes

CO2balance has registered the world’s first micro Programme of Activities (mPoA) designed to help scale up all Improved Cookstoves, Improved Water Supplies and Water Treatment Technology projects in any Least Developed Country (most of sub-saharan Africa). We also have a similar Programme for non-LDC countries (e.g. India, Brazil) using these same technologies and a dedicated Solar photovoltaic and Kerosene Lamp replacement Programme, so we are able to develop most domestic level renewable and efficient offset projects in all countries where they are needed. Our mPoAs are designed to help early stage potential offset projects using the above technologies to get off the ground, or even re-instigate projects that have previously failed due to a lack of sustainable finance (e.g. failure after donor pull out). We can provide an accelerated route to carbon credit issuance and hence a sustainable funding mechanism for clients as we assume responsibility for screening projects to ensure they meet our pre-defined eligibility criteria. This means that the risks, expense and time taken to pass though the usual carbon project cycle are greatly reduced for our partners.

Microprogrammes Explained

In a normal offset project, the project development costs to validate and verify the credits takes a long time to complete, is expensive and can be a risky undertaking for project owners. As a result, smaller projects expecting to offset less than 10,000 credits were considered non-viable because the high project costs were not balanced by a sufficient return from the carbon credits. Recognising this fact, the Gold Standard developed their microscale programme of activities, which removed the barriers of cost and time to projects expected to offset 10,000 credits or less. The microscale programme works as framework agreed in advance with Gold Standard in which small projects meeting pre defined specific criteria of the programme are able to be included within it. The Co-ordinating and Managing Entity (CME) of the programme is responsible for making sure the projects included within it are viable prior to formally applying to the Gold Standard. As projects are assessed by the CME before the formal validation and verification, this vastly reduces the time taken to generate credits, the cost of audit and – importantly - the risk of making expensive and irreparable mistakes in the project development process.