Standards of Integrity

To be included in the COREworks inventory, all projects must meet or exceed the following standards, as assessed first by COREworks and then by an external review team.

1. program values

All projects must further COREworks-specific values and purposes.

    • Local. Projects must take place in or near Rockbridge County, Virginia.
    • Inclusive. Projects must enact COREworks programmatic goals by engaging diverse stakeholders as agents and/or recipients of conservation benefits.
    • Bountiful. Projects must realize additional stated and measurable co-benefits (ecological, educational, social) beyond greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction.

2. industry criteria

All projects must meet industry-wide standards for greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions.

    • Additional. Projects must occur beyond what would have happened in a baseline or business as usual scenario. Put differently, a project is additional only if it would not have happened without funding from COREworks. Revenue generated by the COREworks marketplace must effectively cause or enable the project’s intervention.
    • Permanent. Projects must permanently reduce atmospheric carbon and other greenhouse gases. Therefore, projects must not be subject to significant risk of reversal, by which captured emissions could be re-released into the atmosphere at some point in the future.
    • Resilient. Projects must function effectively throughout their proposed emission period. Therefore, projects must be resilient to factors which might alter their predicted emission reductions, such as project abandonment or underperformance. Projects must demonstrate resilience in the method appropriate to their project type.
        • Solar and Tree Planting Projects. Projects must provide confirming evidence of continued implementation and maintenance in the form of contracts and warranties, submitted with their proposals.
        • Compost and Soil Projects. Projects must employ industry best practices for monitoring, and provide verifiable emission reduction quantifications for completed monitoring periods with their proposals.

      3. accepted methods

      All projects must employ broadly accepted methods of calculation when quantifying anticipated emission reductions associated with COREworks offsets. The calculation methods must be:

        • Measurable. The process by which project activity reduces greenhouse gas emissions must be well understood and readily quantifiable. Calculations must employ broadly accepted formulas.
        • Transparent. The project applicant must explicitly disclose and justify all calculations and assumptions made in the quantification process.
        • Accurate. All calculations and assumptions must be accurate. In calculating the number of anticipated offsets, the applicant must account for leakage if applicable.

      4. offset integrity

      To avoid double-counting (and to further ensure the additionality requirement), all applicants must state and provide evidence that no project stakeholder may register emission reductions resulting from the proposed project on any other carbon offset registry or environmental marketplace. For the record, COREworks retains exclusive and permanent ownership of all COREworks-funded offsets.