Crowdfunding for Carbon Credits with Cool Effect
Cool Effect is making crowdfunding count when it comes to climate change. Their unique projects include only those that have been vetted by rigorous scientific modeling and have proven track records of carbon reduction and have verified carbon standards.
It was a Yale study that upon learning that most Americans are alarmed or concerned about climate change and want companies to make it easier for them to have an impact, founders Dee and Richard Lawrence created Cool Effect to offer an option.
And the name? Similar to the Butterfly Effect, the Ripple Effect, and the Domino Effect, the Cool Effect is the big impact a group of individuals can have by taking small actions to cool the Earth.
You can support one of their individual projects, or support the ‘Coollection’ of all carbon-reducing projects with a one-time or monthly donation. Their projects, which are limited in number, have been reviewed and approved by the non-profits high standards. Cool Effect currently features less than 10 of the world’s best carbon-reduction projects that meet the highest standards in terms of additionality, permanence and accountability. There are over 10,000 currently available on the carbon market.
The global projects utilize a variety of proven carbon emission reduction technologies including clean cookstoves, biogas, methane capture, and utilized in one of the newest projects, wind power. Whether choosing one or multiple projects to fund, it’s awesome to know that each project has verification to ensure that additional carbon is being reduced from the atmosphere, as measured in metric tonnes of CO2 emission reductions.
Furthermore, all projects meet the requirements of one of the major carbon standards—Gold Standard, Verified Carbon Standard, Climate Action Reserve, American Carbon Registry, or the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism. Each project is then independently verified by a third-party verifier that must also meet a set of standards, such as those required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Cool Effect completes its own extensive verification on each project after it has undergone these three steps. Each step is then repeated periodically to ensure projects are still meeting these standards.
The costs of each carbon credit depends on the project, but most costs are under US $13 per tonne with a 9.87% fee, which goes towards credit card processing fees, registry fees if applicable, research fees, and admin. Overall, 90.13% of the funds go directly towards the projects, as the team is funded by outside private foundations.
I think that these projects are super inspiring: each of these projects helps communities around the world live healthier, easier lives, and helps us take action towards reducing our gargantuan individual climate impact.
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