Businesses can use carbon finance to help grow forests, restore mangroves, regenerate degraded land and support the communities doing that work. That is the work C Level exists to support.
The awkward part is that most people still call it carbon offsetting.
I don’t much like the term. I have always found the idea of an “offset” too neat for what is actually happening. It encourages you to imagine a tonne emitted here and a tonne bought somewhere else cancelling each other out. Good carbon projects are more interesting than that. They put money into measurable work in a real landscape.
C Level has spent years trying to use better language around this. Regeneration is one of those words, because it describes the thing we actually want to see happen. I also prefer the language of contribution and carbon removal to the idea that a company can buy itself a clean slate.
A business can work on its own emissions and fund worthwhile climate and nature projects at the same time. I would like to see far more companies doing both.
If you already know the volume you want to fund, send us the tonnage, deadline and the type of carbon outcome you are looking for. We will confirm the project, standard version, unit status, vintage, price and documentation before you commit.
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Why I think “carbon offsetting” is the wrong description
My objection is simple: offset sounds as though the original emission has been cancelled.
An emission that has happened has happened. Paying for a forestry or mangrove project does not make the original exhaust gas vanish. What the money can do is fund another climate outcome: removing carbon from the atmosphere, restoring a damaged landscape, protecting threatened carbon stocks or helping people manage land differently.
I think that is a perfectly good reason to spend the money. It does not need the fiction of cancellation to make it worthwhile.
The old language also encourages businesses to focus on the number of tonnes rather than the quality of the work. Once everything is reduced to “we emitted 1,000 tonnes and offset 1,000 tonnes”, the project itself starts to disappear from view. Who is doing the work? What has actually changed? Has the carbon outcome happened yet? Will it last? Those questions are much closer to what matters.
Most businesses still call this carbon offsetting, so I am not going to pretend the word has disappeared. But I would rather a client left C Level talking about what it funded than how much it “cancelled”.
Carbon finance does not have to wait for perfect decarbonisation
I do not subscribe to the idea that a company should finish every possible internal reduction before it is entitled to finance climate action elsewhere.
Real businesses do not decarbonise in a tidy sequence. A new fleet can take years to replace. A heating system reaches the end of its life when it reaches the end of its life. Scope 3 emissions may sit with suppliers a company can influence but not simply switch off.
So keep reducing. But there is no environmental prize for making a good project wait for the day your own footprint reaches some theoretical minimum.
The UK Government’s voluntary carbon and nature market integrity principles recognise a role for high-integrity credits alongside action within the value chain. The Science Based Targets initiative uses the term beyond value chain mitigation, or BVCM, for climate action outside a company’s own value chain. Its Corporate Net-Zero Standard Version 2.0 was published in June 2026, with validation against the new standard due to open in 2027. Our guide to carbon credits under SBTi sets out what a company can and cannot claim under it.
That language is closer to the way I think about the job. A business can say what it emitted, what it reduced and what extra climate work it chose to finance. Each part stands on its own.
What business carbon offsetting actually pays for
The phrase “buying a carbon credit” makes the transaction sound more abstract than it needs to be.
At CommuniTree in Nicaragua, farmers establish mixed native woodland and agroforestry systems. At Trees for Global Benefits in Uganda, smallholders grow trees in woodlots, agroforestry systems and along farm boundaries. Mikoko Pamoja works with mangroves in Kenya. In Mongolia, the project in our portfolio is based on rangeland regeneration.
The carbon unit is the accounting instrument around that work. It gives a business a measured quantity to buy and a standardised evidence trail. The landscape is where the result has to happen. That accounting sits alongside the statutory kind rather than inside it. What a large UK company publishes in its annual report follows the SECR rules on what has to be measured and shown.
I have been visiting these projects for twenty-five years, and the part that determines whether one works is not contained neatly in a certificate.
What the CommuniTree example tells you
In Nicaragua in 2023 I walked land with a farmer called Bayardo, looking at mahogany seeds on a plot he had planted with mixed native species six years earlier. CommuniTree is a project C Level has supported since it began in 2010.
I use that example because six years is a much more useful fact than a planting-day tree count. Forestry carbon depends on what happens after planting: whether the trees establish, whether the land remains under the project and whether the farmer has a reason to keep going.
That is why I give relatively little weight to impressive planting numbers on their own. They tell you activity took place. They do not tell you the forest has made it.
For a buyer, the consequence is practical. When a project leads with “we planted X million trees”, keep reading. I want to know what happened to them afterwards, what the monitoring says and how the people managing the land are being rewarded for staying involved.
Read Daren’s CommuniTree field report from Nicaragua
Why C Level leads with regeneration and carbon removals
We checked the eleven Plan Vivo projects in the C Level portfolio against Plan Vivo’s published information on 17 August 2026. Seven produce removals only, three produce both removals and reductions, and one produces reductions alone. Ten of the eleven therefore generate some form of carbon removal.
That matters because removals are what most of our buyers now want.
A removal means carbon dioxide is taken from the atmosphere and stored. In our portfolio that can mean carbon accumulating in trees, mangroves, soils and recovering landscapes. Avoided deforestation is different: it protects carbon that might otherwise have been released under a credible baseline.
I am not interested in pretending the two are the same product. If you come to us wanting removals, we will show you removal projects.
| Project | Country | Main climate activity | Carbon outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| CommuniTree | Nicaragua | Reforestation and agroforestry | Removal |
| Scolel’te | Mexico | Reforestation, agroforestry and land management | Removal |
| Khasi Hills | India | Forest protection and assisted natural regeneration | Both |
| Trees for Global Benefits | Uganda | Reforestation, agroforestry and land management | Removal |
| Mongolian Nomads | Mongolia | Rangeland regeneration | Removal |
| Paskaia Mosquita | Honduras | Reforestation and natural regeneration | Removal |
| Hadza Hunter Gatherers & Datooga | Tanzania | Avoided deforestation | Reduction |
| EthioTrees | Ethiopia | Reforestation and agroforestry | Removal |
| Kukumuty | Mozambique | Miombo woodland enrichment and agroforestry | Removal |
| Mikoko Pamoja | Kenya | Mangrove restoration and protection | Both |
| Tahiry Honko | Madagascar | Mangrove restoration and protection | Both |
The fourth column is the useful one. It tells you the basic climate outcome without asking you to decode the project story first.
See the full C Level carbon project portfolio
A cheap tonne can be the wrong tonne
Carbon credits are still too often compared as though the tonne were the whole product. It is not.
If I were shown two quotations for the same volume and one was much cheaper, I would not assume I had found the bargain. I would first want to establish whether the two suppliers were offering the same carbon outcome, the same delivery status and a comparable vintage.
That is where a lot of apparent price comparison falls apart. We look at the project, carbon outcome, standard version, current unit status, vintage, methodology, geography, governance, benefit-sharing arrangements, monitoring history, availability and budget before recommending units. The list sounds technical; the practical question is simpler: what exactly does this tonne represent?
If the quote does not make that clear, ask for it in writing. A number followed by “tCO2e” is not enough information to approve a purchase.
Additionality and the baseline can make a lovely project a poor carbon buy
Additionality asks whether the climate benefit would have happened without the carbon finance. The baseline asks what would probably have happened instead.
I am wary of projects being judged mainly from photographs or tree counts because neither tells you whether the carbon calculation is sound. A project can be socially valuable and ecologically attractive while still having a baseline or additionality case that needs challenging.
That does not make the social or ecological work irrelevant. It means you should not use one kind of goodness as proof of another.
Plan Vivo publishes Project Design Documents that allow buyers to look at the methodology, baseline and additionality case, and we read them. A serious buyer or adviser should be able to get behind the sales page as well.
Verification dates need reading, not just displaying
Monitoring and independent verification are different things. Projects monitor and report their work; independent verification is an external assessment for a stated period and scope.
Trees for Global Benefits is a useful example. Its latest annual report is 2024 and its latest published verification report is 2019.
Some buyers will see “2019” and stop. I wouldn’t, because independent verification is periodic rather than annual. The useful question is what the project has reported since that verification and whether the gap is consistent with the programme’s requirements.
The opposite mistake is worse: hiding an old date because it looks untidy. We would rather show it and explain what it means.
Permanence is not only a technical problem
Nature-based carbon sits in living systems. Fire, drought, disease and changing land pressure matter. Standards use monitoring, methodology and mechanisms such as pooled non-permanence buffers to manage some of that risk.
The other part is economic. We have worked with Ecotrust in Uganda for many years. Plan Vivo recorded 51,874 participating smallholder households in Trees for Global Benefits when we checked on 17 August 2026, and the project reported around two million trees planted in 2023.
Those are striking numbers, but I do not think the scale is the most useful part of the story. When I visited Trees for Global Benefits in 2025, one of the things that stayed with me was how closely life and landscape are joined. People can build homes from the earth beneath them and timber grown around them. Food, fuel, income, shelter and land management are not separate subjects.
I think that matters to permanence. If a forestry project stops making sense to the people managing the land, a buffer account is not the whole answer.
This is the sort of thing I mean by regeneration. The carbon sits inside a working landscape and a set of human decisions. Treating the tonne as though it were detached from both is a poor way to judge the project.
Read the Trees for Global Benefits field report
The 60% Plan Vivo rule is more interesting when you look at what happened to the money
Plan Vivo requires at least 60% of the revenue generated from the sale of Plan Vivo Certificates at project level to benefit project participants and local stakeholders through the approved benefit-sharing arrangements.
I like the fact that there is a number attached to this. “Community benefit” is otherwise one of those phrases that can sound impressive while telling you very little.
The number still needs reading properly. It does not mean 60% of the invoice you receive from C Level is handed directly to farmers, and benefit does not always mean individual cash payments.
Kukumuty in Mozambique shows why the second point matters. In the year to 30 April 2025, the four participating communities chose to direct benefit-sharing towards food support during the April and May hunger season. The project reports that 1,679 families received 48,560 kg of rice and 3,488 litres of cooking oil. Its annual report also records €163,400 of certificate sales income and €65,108.85 spent to date directly benefiting participants and other stakeholders.
The interesting part for me is not whether those numbers produce a tidy percentage for a webpage. They do not. It is that you can see what was decided, what was delivered and how many families received it.
That is much more useful than being told a project has “strong co-benefits”.
A programme badge is not a shortcut through the evidence
On 4 August 2026, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market approved PV Climate as a CCP-Eligible programme for projects meeting specified conditions, including the relevant Project Requirements and accredited validation and verification.
That is good news for Plan Vivo. I would still be annoyed to see it turned into a blanket claim that every Plan Vivo unit is “CCP-approved”. It is not what the decision says. Programme eligibility, methodology eligibility and the status of the individual credits are separate questions.
If CCP status matters to your procurement team, ask for the basis of the claim at the unit level rather than accepting the programme badge as shorthand.
Future carbon is not second-rate carbon
The language of offsetting tends to push buyers towards another oversimplification: the idea that the only worthwhile carbon is a tonne that has already happened and can be placed against a past emission.
Projects need money before the final outcome exists, and Plan Vivo Version 5 makes the stage of delivery explicit:
| Certificate | What it represents |
|---|---|
| fPVC, future | Finance linked to an expected future climate outcome that has not yet occurred |
| rPVC, reported | A climate outcome monitored and reported by the project that is awaiting independent verification |
| vPVC, verified | A climate outcome that has completed the required independent verification stage |
I am quite comfortable with a business financing future removal if that is what it actually wants to do. Somebody has to finance the work before a forest has grown.
What I object to is pretending those stages are interchangeable. If you need a verified outcome, buy a verified outcome. If you want to provide early finance to regeneration, say so and fund it on that basis.
Many long-running Plan Vivo projects remain under Version 4, so we confirm the standard version and unit status for the specific purchase rather than forcing older certificates into Version 5 language.
A C Level certificate is not the proof I would rely on
C Level issues a customer certificate. It is useful for recording the purchase, but it is the least independent piece of evidence in the pack because it comes from us.
For retired credits, the stronger trail is the registry record, project documentation, monitoring material and independent verification. Depending on the purchase, you may also have serialised retirement information and the specific project and unit details.
| Evidence | What it helps you establish |
|---|---|
| Project Design Document and methodology | How the project is designed, quantified and governed |
| Monitoring or annual report | What the project reports has happened |
| Independent verification | What an external verifier assessed for the stated period |
| Registry record | The unit, status and retirement trail where applicable |
| C Level certificate | A clear summary of what you bought through us |
If your sustainability team, board or auditor asks what the money funded, you should be able to answer from that evidence rather than from a claim on our website.
That is also why I prefer specific language after the purchase. “We funded and retired 500 verified removals from [project]” tells the reader far more than “we offset 500 tonnes”.
We need better language for what businesses are doing
I would like to see the market become much less interested in claims of cancellation and much more interested in the quality of contribution.
Regeneration says something useful because it points to the physical and social work. Carbon removal says what happened to the carbon. Climate contribution says what the business did without pretending its original footprint vanished.
None of those terms is perfect, and I do not think we need to invent another slogan every six months. The test is simpler: does the language help somebody understand what happened?
If a business financed the establishment of woodland, say that. If it funded verified carbon removal, say that. If it helped restore mangroves, say that. The more specific the description, the less work the word “offset” has to do.
That is where I would like C Level’s clients to end up. Not embarrassed about funding carbon projects, and not trying to inflate the purchase into something it was not.
How much does carbon offsetting for business cost?
There is no sensible universal price because “one carbon credit” covers products with materially different outcomes, vintages and delivery status.
A written quote from C Level identifies the project, standard version, unit status, vintage where applicable, volume, price per tonne, current availability, evidence supplied, retirement position and any separate consultancy or reporting cost. VAT treatment should also be clear.
Those details are what make the price comparable. If one quotation is much cheaper, I would establish why before I treated the difference as a saving. An expected future removal, a verified removal and an avoided-emission credit may all be expressed in tCO2e. They are not the same purchase.
Why use C Level rather than buy direct from a project?
You can buy Plan Vivo Certificates directly from some certified projects, and we are quite open about that.
If you already know the project and units you want, understand the documentation and do not need help with the transaction or claims, buying direct can make sense.
C Level earns its place when judgement is useful. We help businesses compare projects and units, check the evidence, arrange the purchase and retirement where applicable, assemble the supporting documentation and work out how to describe the contribution accurately afterwards.
We have supported CommuniTree since it began in 2010 and worked with Ecotrust in Uganda for many years. Those relationships do not replace independent verification. They give us another layer of knowledge about the people and projects behind the paperwork.
We trust C Level because they work closely with the people on the ground.
Thea Sherer, VP Sustainability, Springer Nature
Frequently asked questions
Is carbon offsetting the right term?
Not in my view. It remains the term most businesses recognise, but “offsetting” suggests cancellation. I prefer to describe the actual activity: funding carbon removal, regeneration or another climate contribution.
Should a business buy carbon credits while it is still reducing emissions?
Yes.
Keep working on your own footprint and finance worthwhile climate action alongside it. I would not make a good project wait until a company has exhausted every internal reduction it might make over the next decade.
What is a good carbon offset for a business?
I would start with the project and the outcome rather than the label “offset”. Look for a credible methodology, additionality case, monitoring record, appropriate independent verification, clear unit status and vintage, sensible treatment of permanence and a community model that works in the actual landscape.
Are carbon removals better than avoided-emission credits?
For most C Level buyers today, removals are the more useful starting point, and that is what we lead with. Avoided deforestation can still be good climate work, but it is a different outcome and should be described as one.
What should I ask a carbon-offset provider before buying?
Ask which project you are buying from, whether the unit represents a removal or reduction, its vintage and status, which standard and methodology apply, and what evidence you will receive.
If the answer is mostly a price per tonne and a project photograph, you do not have enough information yet.
What is the difference between carbon offsetting and climate contribution?
“Offsetting” suggests that the purchase cancels another emission. “Climate contribution” describes the business financing an additional climate outcome without making that equivalence claim. For me, contribution is the more useful idea.
Can C Level help us calculate how much to fund?
Yes. If you do not already have a business footprint, start with our business carbon footprint calculator or speak to us about carbon footprint consultancy.
Talk to us about your carbon programme
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Primary sources
- UK Government, principles for voluntary carbon and nature market integrity. Source
- UK Government, voluntary carbon and nature markets, raising integrity. Source
- Science Based Targets initiative, beyond value chain mitigation. Source
- Plan Vivo. Source
- Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market. Source
Project classifications and standard versions were checked against C Level’s project material and Plan Vivo records on 17 August 2026. Current inventory, price, vintage and unit status should be confirmed for the specific purchase.