Technical Summary of the Absolute Carbon Standard

ACS achieves this through three core assessments that define any emissions pathway:

• Anthropogenic Emissions Model
  ‍Models project emissions in the carbon cycle to determine the impact on the global carbon balance. AEM assesses where anthropogenic activities are moving emissions, not how they are moved.
• Mitigation Type
  ‍ACS designates project mitigation types depending on the calculated outcome of AEM. Projects are found to produce either net positive, negative, or neutral impact on the emissions balance. Mitigation types provide direct accounting value for stocktakes or emissions trading.
• Mitigation Class
  ACS provides separate designations for projects that are innovating new concepts with uncertain impacts from projects deploying at commercial scale with known impacts. Class designation allows for continued development of innovations while ensuring credits meet their climate claims.

AEM models the carbon cycle in three emission pools and five emission pathways that are applicable and consistent to every project. The three pools are:

• Pollution Pool defines all atmospheric and marine emissions
• Use Pool defines all emissions being held for anthropogenic use
• Stored Pool defines all stored emissions

Five defined emission pathways within AEM: Extract, Release, Use/Reuse, Capture, and Store, (shown in Figure 1) describe how anthropogenic activities move emissions into, out of, and within the Use Pool. The resulting project pathway, then directly maps how the project moves emissions between the Stored and Polluting Pools - which is a direct description of its impact on the carbon cycle. Emission quantities are applied to the pathways, and the change in emissions in the Stored and Polluting Pool are summed to determine if the project produced net positive, net negative, or net zero emissions.
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Mitigation Type

‍Mitigation Type designates AEM results as Restoration or Recovery, depending on whether AEM shows a net flux of emissions from the atmosphere into storage or shows a flux returning emissions to where they were sourced. Mitigation types are mathematically determined and explicitly defined. This improves on existing credit labels which are applied inconsistently to climate impacts. Explicit type designations provide clear guidance on claims and directs market demand to the appropriate mitigations for each emissions source. Mitigation Type ensures like-for-like trading and healthy supply-and-demand market mechanisms.

• Restoration: pathways with net transfer of emissions from the Polluting to the Stored Pool. These are negative emissions that can balance positive emissions.
• Recovery: pathways that transfer emissions back to their source pool and result in a net zero emissions impact.
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Figure 2 – A diagram of the different mitigation types that are derived by the Anthropogenic Emissions Model, including the emission pathways across emissions pools that define them