As discussed in How to acquire carbon credits, a common way to purchase carbon credits is through a retailer or an exchange. Many of these services exist primarily to facilitate transactions and provide market liquidity, without necessarily making any representations about the quality of credits transacted (e.g., beyond indicating their origin and the standards against which they were issued). However, many retailers – and some carbon credit exchanges – market themselves as only providing higher-quality credits. Procuring carbon credits from a trustworthy “higher-quality” retailer or exchange is one way to avoid lower-quality credits.
The main challenge with this approach is ascertaining how trustworthy the service is and what their methods are for selecting higher-quality credits. One way to do this is to inquire about which of the various approaches described by this guide they themselves follow. For example, are they simply acquiring carbon credits issued under independently recognized crediting programs – which may not be a reliable guarantee of quality? Or are they only making credits available from specific projects that are rated highly by an independent rating service?
Pros: Sticking to a reliable retailer or exchange for acquiring carbon credits can be a relatively easy way to avoid lower-quality credits, provided the retailer or exchange does a good job themselves of selecting for higher-quality.
Cons: This approach still requires care to determine the relative trustworthiness of the retailer or exchange and to evaluate the criteria they use to select higher-quality carbon credits.