The purpose of the project is to generate electricity using a renewable energy source (wind energy) and exporting the electricity to the regional grid system of India. The project is expected to replace anthropogenic GHG emissions of approximately 45,317 tCO2e per year, thereby displacing 47,829 MWh/year of electricity generated by traditional power plants connected to the Indian grid which are mainly thermal/ fossil fuel-based power plants.

The carbon offsets from this project are “Gold Standard” certified. Gold Standard was established in 2003 by the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund) and other international NGOs to ensure projects that reduced carbon emissions featured the highest levels of environmental integrity and contributed to sustainable development.

The Waste to Energy project focuses on avoidance of landfill methane and displaced grid electrical generation from the installation of a new nominal 600 ton per day combustion unit at the Hillsborough County Resource Recovery Facility in Tampa, FL.

Heat recovered from the combustion of municipal solid waste is used to generate electricity. The carbon offsets from this project are certified by Verra, an NGO founded in 2005 to drive greater quality assurance in voluntary carbon markets.

You must prioritize in-house emission reduction. World Kinect always recommends first measure and reducing your carbon emissions to the extent that is economically feasible. Ways to reduce emissions include energy efficiency measures, sourcing renewable fuels and energy, improving operational processes, and so on.
 

For your residual emissions that cannot be reduced, offsets are a viable tool to combat climate change.  When you buy carbon offsets, make sure to buy offsets that are assessed by an independent third party and certified by one of the major standards. World Kinect only works with the largest and most credible standards, like Verra and the Gold Standard. These are developed by NGOs and have been in the carbon market for more than 15 years. A project registered under one of these standards have been through a rigorous certification process:

• The project must be developed in accordance with an approved methodology. The methodologies are very technology specific, are developed by sector experts and subject to public hearings before they are approved.
• An independent 3rd party must certify that the project is developed in accordance with the methodology and is eligible for registration. This certification involves an assessment of the project’s additionality - that the project would not have happened without being registered as a carbon offset project. It also certifies that the offsets from the project will only be counted once and that the project will not cause increased emissions elsewhere (“leakage”).
• If the independent 3rd party certifies the project, it is submitted for registration to the chosen standard. The standard will then perform its own approval process of the project before it is registered under the standard.
• When the project has operated for a certain period, e.g., one year, an independent 3rd party must certify the emission reductions that have taken place because of the project. When this has been certified and the standard has approved the certification report, the carbon offsets can be issued to the standard’s registry, which is publicly available.
• Each carbon offset represents a reduction of one ton of CO2 and has a traceable serial number.