Brighter Planet

What is "additionality"?

Additionality is one of the five qualities that our Carbon Offset Policy requires in our carbon offsets.

Further information

Here is one definition:

Emissions reductions are “additional” if they occurred because of the presence of incentives associated with the existence of GHG markets, voluntary or mandatory. A variety of stakeholders have proposed many different additionality “tests,” but at its root, demonstrating the additionality of a carbon offset means showing that the emissions reductions being used as offsets are not “business as usual.”

(A Consumers’ Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers, pg. 13. Clean Air-Cool Planet, 2006.)

In other words, “is an offset additional?” means “would the project that created this offset have happened without revenues from offset purchases?”

Offsets must be additional in order to create the desired environmental effect, namely, the reduction of CO₂e.

Trexler gives an example of a non-additional project:

For example, if offsets are claimed from the collection and destruction of methane at a landfill, what otherwise would have happened to that methane? If the methane would have been collected and destroyed anyway (whether because it is required by law or is standard business practice), then buying those methane reductions will not result in “additional” environmental benefit.

All Brighter Planet offsets are additional, as required by our Carbon Offset Policy.

Here is how we define additionality in our Carbon Offset Policy:

The most important criterion is that projects are additional—that is, they would not have been built were it not for the prospect of receiving additional proceeds from the sale of offsets.

“Business as usual” improvements, on the other hand, are non-additional and their corresponding pollution reduction cannot be sold as a bona fide offset. Brighter Planet will purchase offsets only from additional projects.

What is an example of an “additional” project?

To give you an example of additionality, look at the Wray School District wind project. According to District Superintendent Ron Howard, “the funding made available by selling [carbon reductions] makes up substantially the amount we were in deficit, and will enable us to see this project finalized.”

Working with NativeEnergy, they pre-sold the estimated total offsets of the wind project and hence were able to move forward with it. If these offsets had not been sold, then the project would not have gone forward.