07CarbonBlaze Field Guide
Learn carbon credits before you follow the links.
Original, local explanations for people, organizations, and public institutions—covering carbon footprints, credit lifecycles, integrity, nature, claims, policy, and digital infrastructure.
Your learning route
47 lessons. One clearer starting point.
01Start with the unit
What are carbon credits?
A clear introduction to the units, projects, records, and claims commonly described as carbon credits.
Read lesson02Compensation and context
How carbon offsets work
Learn why offsets are used, what they are intended to fund, and why they should not be confused with direct emissions reductions.
Read lesson03Questions before conclusions
What makes a carbon credit higher integrity?
A practical framework for thinking about additionality, quantification, permanence, tracking, safeguards, and double counting.
Read lesson04Activity is not quality
Carbon project types
Understand the broad difference between emissions avoidance, reductions, and removals—and why a project type is only the first part of a research question.
Read lesson05Follow the record
How carbon registries work
Learn what a registry can show about issuance, ownership, transfer, retirement, and the public record behind a unit.
Read lesson06Say what happened
Making clearer carbon claims
A practical guide to separating emissions inventories, direct reductions, target setting, credit use, and public-facing climate language.
Read lesson07More than a co-benefit
Biodiversity in carbon-credit conversations
Learn why biodiversity needs its own evidence trail when a carbon project involves ecosystems, species, land, or water.
Read lesson08A long-term living system
Forest restoration and carbon
Understand why forest restoration is more than tree planting, and how to ask better questions about climate, biodiversity, and carbon-credit claims.
Read lesson09Traceability, not a shortcut
Blockchain records and carbon-credit retirement
Learn what a blockchain-based record may show after a carbon-credit pathway is completed—and what it cannot prove on its own.
Read lesson10Climate action with ecosystems
Nature-Based Solutions and carbon
Explore how protecting, restoring, and sustainably managing ecosystems can relate to climate action without collapsing carbon, biodiversity, and community outcomes into one claim.
Read lesson11Leakage, vintage, methods and claims
Carbon-credit integrity questions
A practical local guide to examining leakage, vintage, methodology, public records, remaining uncertainty, and the language used after carbon-credit activity.
Read lesson12Begin with a boundary
What is a carbon footprint?
A plain-language guide to what a footprint estimate can include, what it cannot settle by itself, and how it can start a better climate-action conversation.
Read lesson13Follow the unit
The carbon-credit lifecycle
How project design, methodology, review, issuance, tracking, transfer, retirement, and public records fit together without any one step becoming a complete quality verdict.
Read lesson14Would it have happened anyway?
Additionality: the counterfactual question
Why additionality is a central but difficult quality question, and what transparent documentation can reveal without turning it into a badge.
Read lesson15Ask where and how long
Permanence and leakage
Two core integrity questions: whether a stated outcome is expected to endure and whether emissions may shift outside the assessed boundary.
Read lesson16Organization-wide context
Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions
An approachable introduction to organizational inventory categories and why an inventory boundary differs from a carbon-credit project boundary.
Read lesson17Policy context matters
Article 6 and international carbon markets
A neutral guide to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, international cooperation, and why policy accounting terms should not be casually applied to every voluntary credit.
Read lesson18Records, systems, and limits
Digital carbon-market infrastructure
How marketplaces, registries, APIs, data systems, and blockchain records may support traceability while remaining separate from carbon-credit quality questions.
Read lesson19Disclosed third-party references
Carbonmark and Klima Protocol: infrastructure context
An original CarbonBlaze explainer of the third-party infrastructure it references behind the scenes and the limits of platform descriptions and technical records.
Read lesson20Public-interest questions
Carbon markets for public institutions
A general-information route for public-sector readers exploring policy, procurement, accounting, transparency, and community safeguards.
Read lesson21The reference scenario
Carbon-credit baselines
How a baseline frames an estimated outcome, why counterfactuals are uncertain, and what documentation can make assumptions easier to inspect.
Read lesson22Measurement with limits
Quantification uncertainty in carbon credits
Why estimates, models, sampling, and uncertainty matter when a carbon-credit methodology quantifies a claimed greenhouse-gas outcome.
Read lesson23One outcome, clear records
Double counting and carbon credits
The different ways an outcome can be issued, transferred, used, or claimed more than once—and why records and claim context both matter.
Read lesson24From summary to evidence
How to read carbon-project documents
A reading route for project descriptions, methodologies, monitoring reports, validations, verifications, and public registry records.
Read lesson25Evidence over time
Carbon-project monitoring
What monitoring is intended to do, how it differs from a project promise, and why periods, methods, and accessibility matter.
Read lesson26Landscape context
Forest conservation and carbon credits
Why forest-conservation credit discussions start with deforestation pressures, tenure, safeguards, monitoring, and long-term landscape context.
Read lesson27Water, soils, and time
Peatlands and carbon
How peatland condition, water management, drainage risk, and monitoring shape climate and ecosystem questions.
Read lesson28Coastal systems
Mangroves and blue carbon
A careful introduction to mangrove carbon conversations, including tidal ecosystems, coastal livelihoods, disturbance risks, and evidence limits.
Read lesson29Trees in working landscapes
Agroforestry and carbon
How trees integrated with crops or livestock create distinct monitoring, tenure, livelihood, and evidence questions.
Read lesson30Variable living systems
Soil carbon
Why soil carbon is difficult to measure, how sampling and models may be used, and why management context remains essential.
Read lesson31Rights are evidence
Land rights and carbon projects
Why tenure, consent, participation, benefit-sharing, and grievance processes are central to reading land-based credit pathways.
Read lesson32The additionality question
Renewable energy and carbon credits
Why renewable-energy credit pathways need context on grids, policy, financing, technology costs, and the role carbon revenue is said to play.
Read lesson33Use, fuel, and context
Clean cooking and carbon credits
How clean-cooking pathways connect technology, household practices, fuel use, monitoring, health, gender, and claims questions.
Read lesson34A potent gas, clear baseline
Methane capture and carbon credits
Why methane pathways focus on emissions sources, capture systems, regulation, destruction or use, and baseline context.
Read lesson35Incentives and controls
Industrial gas abatement and carbon credits
How high-global-warming-potential industrial gas pathways raise questions about production incentives, regulation, measurement, and crediting safeguards.
Read lesson36Baselines on the move
Transport and carbon credits
Why transport pathways require a clear baseline, usage evidence, infrastructure context, and careful treatment of changing travel behavior.
Read lesson37Engineered removal context
Direct air capture
An original guide to atmospheric CO₂ capture systems, energy sources, storage pathways, measurement, and lifecycle questions.
Read lesson38Biomass, heat, and persistence
Biochar and carbon removal
How biochar pathways connect feedstock, pyrolysis, soil application, durability assumptions, and broader land-use questions.
Read lesson39Geochemistry in context
Enhanced rock weathering
How enhanced rock weathering is intended to accelerate mineral reactions and why measurement, material sourcing, and environmental context matter.
Read lesson40Marine evidence and uncertainty
Ocean alkalinity enhancement
A cautious introduction to marine alkalinity approaches, monitoring challenges, governance questions, and ecosystem uncertainty.
Read lesson41Different starting landscapes
Afforestation and reforestation
Why restoring forest and establishing tree cover are different pathways, and why ecological history, rights, species, risk, and stewardship matter.
Read lesson42Reduce before compensating
The mitigation hierarchy
A practical explanation of why avoiding and reducing emissions are typically described separately from any later credit pathway.
Read lesson43What remains matters
Residual emissions
Why residual-emissions language needs an inventory boundary, time period, reduction context, and careful distinction from a general footprint.
Read lesson44National accounting context
Corresponding adjustments
What corresponding-adjustment language refers to under Article 6, and why it should not be treated as a generic badge for every credit or claim.
Read lesson45Data is not the full answer
Digital MRV (dMRV)
How sensors, remote data, models, and digital workflows may support measurement, reporting, and verification while retaining governance and evidence questions.
Read lesson46Interoperability with limits
Carbon data APIs and records
What data interfaces can help people find and connect records, and why an API result still needs the underlying program and evidence context.
Read lesson47Four documents, different questions
Reading carbon-offset records
A source-led way to separate activity estimates, crediting rules, project evidence, registry status, and public communication without turning any single record into a verdict.
Read lesson