Project Types - Tradewater

Carbon Projects

Our Focus is Halocarbons and Methane

At Tradewater, we're focused on a group of highly potent greenhouse gases— called non-CO2 gases. These gases have an outsized effect on global warming and many also deplete the ozone layer.

The non-CO2 gases that Tradewater targets would never be destroyed or controlled at scale in the absence of carbon offset projects.

Our carbon offset projects are guided by a single principle: to have the greatest possible impact.

Halocarbons

Halocarbons in the form of halons and refrigerant gases are one key area of focus. This class of industrial gases includes some of the most potent global warming and ozone-depleting substances ever made—as much as 10,200 times more potent than CO2. Once these dangerous synthetic gases are released, they can never be recaptured from the atmosphere.

Tradewater permanently destroys these halons and refrigerant gases in ways that are environmentally safe, definitively measured, and verified.

More on Halocarbons

Methane

Methane emissions from orphaned oil and gas wells are another major issue we are tackling. Since the industrial revolution, methane emissions have skyrocketed.Methane is 84 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year timeframe and is responsible for at least 25% of today's global warming.

Tradewater's projects permanently prevent future releases of methane from uncontrolled wells. We ensure that methane emissions are scientifically measured and engineer a solution to permanently plug each methane source.

More on Methane

Making a big impact– globally

Tradewater is on a mission to prevent the release of non-CO2 gases around the world. Learn more about Tradewater's projects and the climate impacts made by visiting the project detail pages below.

Project Details
Methane Projects
Project Details
Chile Project
Project Details
Saudi Arabia Project
Project Details
Thailand Project

Tradewater is committed to pursuing projects that meet multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals.

*SDGs vary based on project and project type.

Criteria for High Quality Carbon Credits

There are a set of key criteria that indicate whether a carbon offset credit can be considered “high quality”:
  • High quality carbon offset credits must be additional. This means that the projects would not have been done in the absence of the carbon offset market.
  • Projects are of higher quality if the emission reductions are permanent.
  • High quality carbon offset credits come from projects in which the resulting credits are “accurate” or not overestimated.
    • Tradewater’s carbon offset projects achieve excellent results on each of the aforementioned criteria, and a buyer of Tradewater offset credits may be confident that without Tradewater’s work, no one would be destroying halocarbon gases and permanently preventing methane emissions at this scale.

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    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.