When a shop uses Climate Counts, it chooses a percentage of eligible sales to put towards high-integrity climate projects. The money does not disappear into a general environmental fund, and we do not simply buy whichever carbon credit happens to be cheapest.
It builds towards Plan Vivo Certificates from community-led nature projects selected by C Level.
At 1%, £100 of eligible sales adds £1. At the current price of £26.25 per tonne, £2,625 of eligible sales generates enough funding for one whole carbon credit, before VAT. One Plan Vivo Certificate represents one tonne of CO₂e reduced or removed, depending on the project and the type of certificate. Customers are not charged anything extra at checkout.
The exact projects may change as availability, vintages and certificate status change. We think that is better than pretending carbon credits are interchangeable. What stays fixed is the way we select them, the evidence behind them and the registry record of what was actually retired.
What high-integrity carbon means in Climate Counts
“High integrity” has become an easy phrase to use in the carbon market. For us it has to survive a more practical question: what exactly is the tonne, and what evidence sits behind it?
We start with the carbon outcome. Is the project removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, avoiding emissions that would otherwise occur, or doing both? Those are different outcomes and we do not collapse them into one vague description.
Then we look at how the number was produced. Under the current PV Climate standard, projects must use an approved methodology. Plan Vivo’s methodology system includes specific procedures for baselines, project emissions and removals, leakage and uncertainty rather than leaving those questions to a project’s marketing material.
We also look beyond the carbon calculation. Land tenure, community participation, benefit sharing, environmental and social risks, monitoring history and grievance procedures all affect whether a nature project is likely to work for decades rather than merely produce a certificate today.
Plan Vivo requires environmental and social risk assessment during project development, ongoing monitoring, grievance reporting and independent review. Those requirements matter to us because biological carbon depends on people continuing to protect and manage the landscape long after the first payment has been made.
Certification is therefore the start of our due diligence, not the end of it. We look at the actual project, its current documents and the certificate being offered.
Why Climate Counts uses Plan Vivo carbon projects
Plan Vivo is unusually well suited to the sort of projects C Level wants to fund.
Its roots go back to the 1990s, making PV Climate the longest-standing carbon standard in the voluntary market. It was built specifically around community and smallholder-led land projects, rather than treating local participation as an additional benefit attached to a carbon calculation.
That difference becomes quite concrete.
Plan Vivo requires at least 60% of the income from the sale of Plan Vivo Certificates to go back to the communities on the ground. Projects must use approved carbon methodologies, report regularly and undergo independent validation and verification. Auditors review the documents, visit the project and check whether what is happening on the ground matches what has been planned and reported. Verification is required within five years of certification and at least every five years thereafter.
In August 2026, PV Climate was also approved as a CCP-Eligible carbon-crediting programme by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market. That is an important external assessment of Plan Vivo’s governance and quality-assurance system. We would not stretch it further than the evidence allows: programme-level eligibility does not mean that every Plan Vivo Certificate automatically carries the CCP label. Individual methodologies and credits still have to meet the relevant ICVCM requirements.
C Level is itself listed by Plan Vivo as a registered intermediary for Plan Vivo Certificates.
What the carbon projects actually do
A nature-based carbon credit begins long before anything appears on a registry.
Depending on the project, the work may involve restoring degraded forest, establishing agroforestry on small farms, regenerating wetlands, improving land management or protecting ecosystems under pressure. Plan Vivo’s current standard covers restoration, agroforestry, protection and improved management projects.
The practical work can take years. Land and participation have to be agreed. A baseline has to be established. Nurseries may need to be created, seedlings raised and trees planted. Farmers or community organisations have to manage the land, replace losses, monitor growth and continue doing the work through drought, storms, fire, changes in land use and ordinary human life.
Only then does the carbon accounting make sense.
That is one reason we have stayed close to projects rather than treating a tonne as a commodity. C Level has worked with Plan Vivo projects since 2000 and has long-standing relationships with several project organisations in its portfolio.
The carbon number matters. So does whether the project is likely to still be there to support it.
Plan Vivo carbon credits can be at different stages
This is one of the places where carbon-market language can become misleading.
A certificate does not necessarily mean that an independent auditor has already measured and verified one completed tonne of carbon benefit.
Under PV Climate Version 5, Plan Vivo distinguishes between:
- Future PVCs (fPVCs), representing carbon benefits expected in future;
- reported PVCs (rPVCs), where the project has reported that the carbon benefit has occurred but it has not yet completed independent verification; and
- verified PVCs (vPVCs), where the reported carbon benefit has subsequently been independently verified.
Long-established projects are also moving from the older Version 4 system into Version 5 as their verification cycles come round.
We do not regard that as an inconvenient technicality to hide. Early carbon finance can be extremely valuable because forests have to be funded before they mature. But a future tonne and an independently verified tonne are not the same thing, and they should not be described as though they are.
For any Climate Counts allocation, the project and certificate record should tell you what was actually purchased. Retirement prevents that certificate being used again; it does not magically change its verification status.
How a Shopify sale becomes carbon project funding
The merchant chooses the percentage of eligible sales it wants to commit and can set a monthly cap.
Suppose that percentage is 1%.
A £100 eligible sale adds £1 to the Climate Counts balance. £1,000 adds £10. Once the accumulated balance reaches £26.25, at the current price, there is enough to fund one whole Plan Vivo Certificate.
Returns and cancellations are taken off before the eligible sales figure is finalised. Any amount below the next whole certificate carries forward rather than being presented as though a fractional carbon credit has already been bought.
C Level then allocates the funding to an eligible project, purchases the certificate and retires it on the S&P Global Environmental Registry, used by Plan Vivo. The merchant receives the record.
The customer has paid the normal shop price throughout. Climate Counts is funded from the merchant’s revenue, not from a surcharge added at checkout.
The registry shows what was actually retired
Plan Vivo Certificates are issued, transferred and retired on registries operated by S&P Global.
Each certificate has a unique serial number. Once retired, it is taken out of circulation and cannot subsequently be sold or retired by somebody else. The registry also gives access to project documentation including design documents, annual reports and audit reports.
That distinction is worth keeping clear. Retirement proves that a particular certificate has been taken out of circulation. The methodology, monitoring and verification record tell you what carbon outcome that certificate represents.
Those two pieces of evidence belong together.
C Level retires Climate Counts credits in batches, and records them privately rather than on the registry’s public pages. Each merchant receives the registry reference for the retirement that covers its credits.
Browse Plan Vivo’s registry pages and project documents
What the £26.25 Climate Counts price pays for
Climate Counts currently charges £26.25 per whole tonne plus VAT.
That price covers the Plan Vivo Certificate, sourcing and allocation, registry retirement, the administration needed to maintain the record, operation of the service and C Level’s margin.
Plan Vivo’s 60% community-benefit requirement should not be misunderstood here. It applies to the income generated from the sale of the Plan Vivo Certificate at project level. It does not mean that 60% of a merchant’s VAT-inclusive £26.25 retail charge is simply transferred as cash to a local participant.
We think it is better to explain that distinction than turn a good Plan Vivo requirement into a misleading percentage claim.
What Climate Counts merchants can credibly say
A merchant using the app can say something simple and factual:
1% of our eligible sales helps fund high-integrity climate projects.
It can then link here so customers can see what sits behind that statement.
What it should not say is that every order is carbon neutral, that the customer’s purchase has been “cancelled out”, or that buying carbon credits has removed the merchant’s own Scope 1, 2 or 3 emissions.
Plan Vivo’s own 2026 buyer guidance makes the same underlying distinction: carbon finance should complement a company’s own emissions reductions, not be presented as a substitute for them.
Climate Counts is therefore deliberately a funding commitment, not a carbon-neutrality badge.
Why C Level built Climate Counts
C Level has worked with carbon measurement and community-led nature projects since 2000. We have seen the carbon market become much larger, much more technical and, in places, much easier to obscure behind labels.
Climate Counts takes a process we already use with business buyers and makes it practical for ecommerce: choose a defined share of revenue, direct it into properly selected projects, record the certificate, retire it on the registry and keep the claim within what the evidence actually supports.
The technology is the easy part. The important part is knowing what you are buying.