Absolute Climate is excited to announce the upcoming release of the Absolute Carbon Standard. The Absolute Carbon Standard (ACS) is a new approach to climate mitigation assessment, expanding upon existing carbon standards to ensure that project claims match climate impacts. ACS is the first industry wide-standard that evaluates projects using a universal and objective procedure, rather than pathway-specific methodologies. This enables apples-to-apples comparisons between projects, even for dramatically different technologies.
Today, each climate mitigation pathway is evaluated in a vacuum. Pathways are held to their own bespoke evaluation criteria that are often inconsistent from one another. There is no universal assessment of climate mitigations. This makes project diligence expensive and complex for buyers, and differentiation an uphill battle for project developers investing in high-integrity MRV.
The Absolute Carbon Standard is the first climate assessment to ensure compatibility with net-zero goals. It introduces a new assessment model that directly evaluates a project’s impact on the climate, not just whether project activities match a methodology. This approach removes the uncertainty about whether a project has claimed all appropriate emissions, aligning reported outcomes with net-zero goals.ACS is built using three core components:
- Anthropogenic Emissions Model
A new framework for modeling project-related anthropogenic emissions in the context of the carbon cycle, ensuring consistent project scoping - Mitigation Type
Explicitly defined credit types that align with emissions accounting, ensuring that claims will stand the test of time - Mitigation Class
A designation to separate early-stage projects that are innovating new approaches with mature projects, enabling appropriate but different levels of scrutiny for each. Class designation provides room for continued development of innovations while ensuring the industry is held to a high-bar.
Over the next several weeks we’ll be publishing essays on the core components of ACS, culminating in the release of the full standard. We’ve already published the first two essays: a technical summary of ACS and a technical summary of the Anthropogenic Emissions Model.
Do you have questions or input? Are you curious about collaborating with Absolute Climate? We’d love to talk - hello@absoluteclimate.com
