Sterling Planet recently agreed to purchase Voluntary Carbon Units (VCUs) from the Greenville County landfill gas utilization project, which is verified to the Voluntary Carbon Standard. Sterling believes these are the first VCUs issued in the U.S. marketplace.
The VCUs from the Greenville project will be added to the company’s retail carbon offset portfolio.
The project is estimated to prevent 6,000 metric tons of methane emissions, or 125,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually over the next 10 years. That’s the equivalent of removing 23,000 passenger vehicles from the roads annually, according to EPA data.
The Voluntary Carbon Standard was formed in 2007 by three of the biggest sellers and buyers of carbon offsets to distinguish offsets that are real from those that aren’t.
With so many different carbon offset standards to choose from, the Stockholm Environment Institute, recently wrote a report titled, “Making Sense of the Voluntary Carbon Market: A Comparison of Carbon Offset Standards,” to help gain an insight at the voluntary carbon offset market.