Carbon emissions are the greenhouse gases that polluters release into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are the main greenhouse gases, but many others exist. Different gases damage our atmosphere differently. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers that emitting one ton of methane has the global warming effect of releasing 28 tons of carbon dioxide over the next 100 years. Emitting one ton of nitrous oxide is like emitting 258 tons of carbon dioxide!

To compare amounts of greenhouse gases for climate change purposes, people measure emissions in tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e). So one ton of carbon dioxide is worth one ton of CO₂e; one ton of methane equals 28 tons of CO₂e; and one ton of nitrous oxide equals 258 tons of CO₂e. A polluter typically emits a mix of greenhouse gases, so our conversions from gas amounts to tons of CO₂e allow us to give a single number to their overall emissions. We call this number the polluter's carbon emissions.

When you buy Ultra Civic's carbon reductions, we remove permits from carbon markets. For each permit we remove, we give you a certificate with the permit's serial number. Every permit we remove curbs big polluters' emissions by a ton, so the certificates certify the reduction of one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent in our atmosphere. We view these certificates as carbon credits that are actually accurate.

We could have created physical certificates and mail them to you, but we worried that people might falsify them. We wanted to let you trade your certificates, just like people trade carbon credits, but we didn't want to keep track of who gave which certificates to whom.

The solution we embraced is to issue the certificates as tokens in a stable blockchain. Each token has a permit's serial number, so every token is different. Only we can create the tokens, so others cannot falsify certificates. Moreover, you can trade these tokens as you wish, without us needing to run a marketplace. These tokens are deployed in the Ethereum blockchain and satisfy the ERC-1155 standard.

We remove permits from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Check out their adorable introduction to the program. Created in 2009, RGGI was the first carbon market in the United States. It targets the emissions of power plants that burn fossil fuels to produce electricity in the northeastern United States: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

We like RGGI because it is a simple and reliable program: it focuses exclusively on electric utilities; it decides how many permits to supply well in advance; and it allocates permits transparently with a uniform price auction. It is also a big market. In 2023, RGGI participants emitted over 40% of the UK's total emissions! Eventually, we will also remove permits from the California and Quebec cap-and-trade system. Stay tuned!

You can find country-level emissions data in EDGAR, and detailed RGGI emissions data here.

In our carbon market, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), polluters are power plants that burn fossil fuels to produce electricity. Their emissions enter the atmosphere through large smokestacks. Inside each smokestack is a device called a Continuous Emissions Monitoring System (CEMS), approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is an expensive machine that works around the clock, precisely captures the amount of greenhouse gases moving up the smokestack, and automatically records its measurements in an EPA database accessible to RGGI. These measurement instruments power the carbon market: polluters' emissions do not go unnoticed, so polluters must buy permits if they wish to pollute.

In our carbon market, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the yearly number of permits to issue during 2020 through 2030 was set in 2017, and actual permit issuances have stuck to the plan. You can check out the initial decision here, and the actual permit allocations here. When the supply of permits does not depend on our permit removals, we can be sure that our removals reduce the amount of permits available. When we reduce the amount of permits available, we reduce emissions and raise the polluters' costs of polluting.

No. We permanently reduce emissions; we do not invest in carbon market permits.