How to Purchase Carbon Credits – Part 2
What is next?
You’ve made the decision to purchase carbon credits. Your business analysis is complete, and you’ve decided what category from which to purchase. What are your next steps?
In Part 2 of “How to Purchase Carbon Credits”, we will walk you through the rest of the acquisition process.
Step 1: Making the Purchase
You are ready to make a purchase. The amount of carbon credits you buy needs to match the quantity written in your business valuation. Westlark Advisors already has an established account with Xpansiv (CBL) trading platform and can quickly make the purchase of desired credits to meet your business needs.
Step 2: Retiring the Carbon Credits
Next comes one of the key steps in the process, retiring the carbon credits. Retiring carbon credits is important and needs to happen quickly. As soon as a purchase is complete, Westlark Advisors retires credits, either immediately following purchase or over the course of the next year.
Retirement of credits is vital for several reasons.
1. Retiring a credit officially removes it from the market. A retired credit cannot be resold.
2. Retiring a credit gives your business proof that you purchased and used that particular credit. Westlark Advisors will retire a credit with the appropriate international registry, and your business will receive a record of retirement from the registration firm, proving your rights to this credit against your emissions.
3. And the final reason for retiring credits – this is the only way Westlark Advisors will perform this process.
Our reason for this is simple. We purchase carbon credits for our clients with the intent that the fuel distributor will be carbon neutral. A business can ONLY prove carbon neutrality if they complete the entire process – meaning they go through an analysis, purchase carbon credits, then retire those credits.
If not retired, then carbon credits can potentially be resold, and businesses lose their emissions offset if the carbon credits they purchase are resold.
Step 3: Issuing a Certification Report
The final step in this whole process is a certification report from Westlark Advisors. This report states that we have analyzed your business, purchased credits, retired those credits, and claim that these credits offset your carbon footprint. This is the end of the process for carbon credits!
Check back here for the final post in our carbon neutrality series to find out how your business can benefit from incorporating carbon credits. Contact your Westlark Advisors team for more information about how your business can manage the transition to carbon neutrality.
How to Purchase Carbon Credits – Part 2
By JD Buss
