Ark Climate Offsets
Ark Climate is a provider of carbon abatement services using only accredited offset products which conform to the Australian Government's National Carbon Offsets Standard (NCOS).
Importantly Ark Climate is one of the rare offset providers in Australia subject to a full independent audit of offsetting activities.
(Source RMIT - EPA Carbon Offset Guide)
Ark Climate supplies carbon offsets accredited under the international Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS).
The VCS has become the most widely recognised and traded credit outside of the mandatory (compliance) schemes.
While no nationally based mandatory emissions trading scheme yet exists Ark Climate can provide compliance grade credits for voluntary offsetting purposes
Contact Ark Climate for further information on 03 9682 4200 .
Ark Climate CDM and VCS Offsets.
Commercial quantities of CDM (compliance) and VCS (voluntary) offsets from various sources are available upon request.
For
smaller quantities and for immediate delivery Ark Climate
renewable energy offsets accredited by the VCS are currently
available and sourced from the Tao HuaShan "run of the river"
mini hydro project in the Baishun province of China. These
offsets are "Pre CDM" category and are held within the VCS
registry. A brief description of the project is available
here.
Building the Baishun Village Mini Hydro
The full Project Description is available from the UNFCCC website here.
.
Why are no local offset projects currently available?
Since ratifiying the Kyoto Protocol, carbon reduction activity in Australia is no longer additional to the government's own targets.
A fundamental criteria for the creation of a carbon credit is that the carbon abatement claimed can be shown to be additional to what would have occured if the carbon credit had not been granted.
Australia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol and is now legally bound to a cap of 600 million tonnes of CO2-e per year for the next 5 years years. If the government exceeds these emissions it must purchase credits from other countries. If it emits less than the cap it will sell credits to other countries.
Therefore taking abatement action in Australia during this period will save the government money but it will not reduce net emissions. As a result abatement action in Australia do not qualify as tradable credits.
Can anything be done about this?
A number of initiatives are now taking place whereby the government will reduce its Kyoto cap in response to abatement activities from certain specific local schemes and projects. This will have the effect of making these projects additional to the government's cap and will be available for creating credits.The GreenPower program will be the first of these concessions and will create additional abatement as of Jan 2010.
Other schemes such as forestry, energy efficiency and soil carbon projects are likely to come on stream over the coming years but this is a new concept and as of this time none have been registered.
Until then Australian purchasers are restricted to buying credits from non capped countries.
For Businesses Customers simply call Ark Climate's - CO2 Exchange on (03) 9682 4200 and we will advise of the most appropriate offsetting strategy and pricing.
For Residential Customers visit Community Climate Chest website.
EPA-RMIT Carbon Offset Guide notes that Ark Climate is one of only 2 out of 80 offset providers in Australia subject to a full audit of offset sales and acquital.
When a customer buys offsets from an offset provider, they are asking that provider to purchase and ultimately acquit (surrender) carbon credits equal to the customers specified amount of carbon abatement.
Unless this process is audited by a qualified and independent third party there is no way of knowing whether the purchase and acquital has actually taken place.
Ark Climate subjects its offsetting processes to a comprehensive audit and has that audit verified by RMIT which publishes the Carbon Offset Guide and updatyes the results on a bi annual basis.