The Role of Carbon Credits in Higher Education’s Sustainability Journey

Ryder Jones, Roberts Environmental Center at Claremont McKenna College

We invited students from Claremont McKenna College’s Roberts Environmental Center (REC) to provide their perspectives on key issues related to carbon markets. Here is a series of articles they have developed as part of a market research project in which Tradewater participated. These views are theirs and do not necessarily reflect Tradewater’s views — but in the interest of stimulating conversation we think they are valuable to share.

Key Notes

  • Carbon offsets allow campuses to immediately compensate for unavoidable emissions, supporting long-term climate goals

  • Leading schools like Pomona, Duke, Allegheny, and Wesleyan are investing in high-quality, verified offsets
  • Offsets work best when used in combination with direct decarbonization efforts, not instead of them

As more colleges and universities step up their climate efforts, one question keeps coming up: what about the emissions they just can’t cut right now? Necessary flights, heating older buildings, and running lab equipment aren’t things that can be eliminated overnight. But as the urgency of the climate crisis grows, delaying action isn’t an option either.

That’s why more and more institutions are turning to carbon offsets. They are investing in verified emissions reduction and removal projects as a near-term way to take responsibility for their climate impact. When used thoughtfully, offsets provide real climate benefits, complement on-campus sustainability efforts, and signal a deeper commitment to climate action.

Offsets as a Practical Solution

Across the country, colleges are making big moves: putting up solar panels, making buildings more energy-efficient, and reworking how people get around campus. But even with the most ambitious plans, there are always some emissions that are hard to avoid. 

Offsets give schools a way to account for those emissions by funding climate-positive projects elsewhere, like methane-capture or industrial emission-abatement projects. These investments don’t replace on-campus action, but they do help institutions make good on their climate promises today. 

At Pomona College, for example, carbon offsets are helping the school compensate for unavoidable emissions, such as those from study abroad flights, while it continues campus-based upgrades. Wesleyan University takes another approach: adding a surcharge to all air travel that is then used to offset the resulting emissions. In 2014, the trustees of Middlebury approved a plan to conserve 2,100 acres of the school’s Bread Loaf campus in perpetuity. Blue Source, a carbon accounting company, assessed the land and quantified carbon credits based on the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered and stored by the Bread Loaf forest. These various models offer flexible and effective ways for schools to integrate offsets into broader climate strategies. 

And let’s be clear: carbon offsets are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Many campuses are making serious sustainability progress without relying on them, and that’s equally valid. The point is that offsets are one tool in a growing toolkit that, when used right, can make a big difference. 

Why Now?

The climate crisis demands urgency. And while long-term solutions like electrifying heating systems or building new solar arrays take time, offsets can deliver immediate emissions reductions. 

This is especially important as students increasingly demand that schools act now, not in five or ten years. According to research cited by The Princeton Review, nearly two-third of students and parents say having information about a school’s commitment to the environment would impact their decision to apply to or attend it. 

That’s a clear message. High-quality carbon offsets offer schools a visible, verifiable way to show they’re serious about climate action, right now, not just in their future plans. 

Not All Offsets Are Created Equal

It’s true: the offset market has had its share of controversy. But that’s exactly why verification and transparency matter so much. 

Offsets should be third-party verified, demonstrate additionality (meaning the project wouldn’t have happened without the offset), and offer clear documentation. The nonprofit Second Nature has been a leader in this space, offering excellent guidance for higher education institutions navigating the carbon markets. Their 2025 Carbon Markets & Offsets Guidance breaks down how to source high-quality offsets and avoid common pitfalls. 

Duke University, who’s partnered with Second Nature, offers a great case study: their internal process for reviewing potential offset projects includes strict vetting to ensure credibility and impact. Allegheny College, another Second Nature partner, has also incorporated offsets as part of a broader sustainability plan, using them to reach carbon neutrality while continuing to improve campus infrastructure. 

The takeaway? Done right, offsets can be credible, effective, and aligned with institutional values. 

Offsets and Accountability

Critics of carbon credits sometimes suggest they allow institutions to “buy their way out” of real climate action. Some offsets, especially poorly monitored or short-lived ones like questionable reforestation projects, may not deliver the long-term emissions reductions they promise. This is a concern, but it’s not the full story. 

Offsets only work when they’re used as part of a broader climate strategy. They should complement, not replace, direct emissions reductions. Fortunately, that’s exactly how most leading institutions are using them. 

The responsible approach is twofold: cut emissions on campus, and invest in verified offsets for what can’t be avoided yet. Schools that follow this path, like Pomona, Duke, Allegheny, and Wesleyan, are showing how offsets can be part of a serious, accountable climate plan. 

Final Thoughts

Higher education has long been a proving ground for ideas that shape society. Today, it has a new opportunity: to lead the way on climate action. By using carbon offsets wisely, alongside deep decarbonization efforts, colleges can model what credible, immediate climate leadership looks like.  

Ryder Jones

Ryder Jones is pursuing a BA in Economics at Claremont McKenna College, and is an analyst at the Roberts Environmental Center. He is interested in renewable energy startups.
Back to Blog

Permanence

Emission reductions are considered permanent if they are not reversible. In some projects, such as forestry or soil preservation, carbon offset credits are issued based upon the volume of CO2 that will be sequestered over future decades—but human actions and natural processes such as forest fires, disease, and soil tillage can disrupt those projects. When that happens, the emission reductions claimed by the project are reversed.

The destruction of halocarbon does not carry this risk. All destruction activities in Tradewater’s projects are conducted pursuant to the Montreal Protocol , which requires “a destruction process” that “results in the permanent transformation, or decomposition of all or a significant portion of such substances.” Specifically, the destruction facilities Tradewater uses must meet or exceed the recommendations of the UN Technology & Economic Assessment Panel , which approves certain technologies to destroy halocarbons, including the requirement that the technology achieve a 99.99% or higher “destruction and removal efficiency.” Simply put, this means that Tradewater’s technologies ensure that over 99.99% of the chemicals are permanently destroyed. During the destruction process, a continuous emission monitoring system is used to ensure full destruction of the ODS collected.

Accuracy

Some carbon offset projects necessarily rely on estimations or assumptions when calculating the emission reductions from project activities. Forestry projects, where developers make assumptions about the carbon that will be sequestered over future decades if trees are conserved, are a perfect example. Such projects sometimes result in an overestimation of the environmental benefit of the project.

Tradewater’s halocarbon projects avoid the issue of overestimation by consistently conducting extremely precise testing and measurement of the amount of refrigerant destroyed in each project.

  • Every container of ODS that Tradewater destroys is weighed by a third-party using regularly calibrated scales. The ODS is then sampled by a third-party and analyzed by an accredited refrigerant laboratory to determine its species and purity. These two steps combine to ensure that credits are issued only for the precise volume and type of refrigerant destroyed.
  • The destruction facilities that Tradewater uses continuously monitor the incineration process during destruction events to ensure that over 99.99% of the ODS is destroyed. This monitoring is mandated by regulatory protocols and is part of the verification process to which projects are subjected.
  • Tradewater accounts for the project emissions created during the collection, transport, and destruction of ODS, and the number of offsets issued is reduced by a corresponding amount. The protocols that we use also build in other reductions to account for substitute chemicals that will be used to replace the destroyed refrigerants. Tradewater publishes this information in the documentation for all its ODS destruction projects. These documents outline how the material was obtained, the project emissions calculations, the test results, and the amount and type of ODS chemicals destroyed, among other information.

    • Additionality

    It is a basic requirement of all carbon offset projects that the underlying project activities are additional. “Additional” means that the projects would not happen in the absence of a carbon market. Tradewater’s halocarbon projects simply would not happen – and the gases would be left to escape into the atmosphere – without the sale of the resulting carbon offset credits. This is because there is no mandate to collect and destroy these gases. It is still permissible to buy, sell, and use halocarbons that were produced before the ban. There are other reasons halocarbon destruction projects are additional:

    • There are no incentives or financial mechanisms to encourage halocarbon destruction. According to the International Energy Agency and United Nations Environment Program, “there is rarely funding nor incentive” to recover and destroy ozone depleting substances in storage tanks and discarded equipment. And collecting, transporting, and destroying halocarbons is time-intensive and expensive. The burden to collect and destroy these gases therefore remains prohibitive outside of carbon offset markets—meaning that if organizations like Tradewater do not do this work, nobody else will.
    • Countries are not focused on the need to collect and destroy halocarbons. The Montreal Protocol has been celebrated as a success because of its production ban. This success, however, ignores the legacy gases produced before the ban and is a blind spot for government regulators. In the U.S., for example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed a Vintaging Model in the 1990s to estimate the quantify of ozone depleting substances left in circulation. Based on the inputs and assumptions put into the model, the EPA predicted that no CFCs would be available for recovery beyond 2020 in the United States. But this prediction did not prove accurate. Tradewater has collected and destroyed more than 1.5 million pounds of CFCs globally in recent years and continues to identify thousands of pounds per week.
    • International carbon accounting standards do not require corporations to measure or track emissions tied to halocarbons, and refrigerants are specifically excluded from Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitments. These commitments derive from emissions reporting under the GHG Protocol, which requires companies to report on emissions only from new generation refrigerants, such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), but does not establish any obligation to report inventories or emissions of refrigerants still in use, such as CFCs and HCFCs. All these factors combine to make Tradewater’s carbon offset projects highly additional. As Giving Green, an initiative of IDinsight, concluded: “Tradewater would not exist without the offset market, so this element of additionality is clearly achieved.” The case for additionality is not so clear for some other project types, such as forestry and landfill gas carbon projects. For example, some forests are already being conserved for their beauty, or for use as parks, and generate carbon offset credits only because those conservation efforts do not yet have full formal protection in place to avoid deforestation in the future. Similarly, methane from landfills can be used to make electricity or captured as compressed natural gas, thereby creating additional revenue streams to support the activities, beyond the sale of carbon credits.