Organisation
Avoided Carbon Emissions Certification
Impact beyond your footprint, verified
Verified Impact Beyond Your Footprint
The Avoided Emissions certification recognises organisations that reduce global emissions outside their own footprint by enabling low-carbon solutions, technologies, or services. This certification verifies that your offerings directly help others reduce their emissions, a powerful form of climate leadership that goes beyond internal reductions.
Avoided Emissions are not offsets. They are real-world, measurable impacts your organisation enables for customers, users, or markets, and this certification provides the third-party assurance needed to communicate that contribution with confidence.
Who Is This For?
- Clean tech, renewable energy, or SaaS providers
- Infrastructure and mobility solutions that displace higher-carbon systems
- Financial and service models that accelerate low-carbon transitions
- Any organisation enabling others to reduce their emissions through verified means
Key Requirements
- Baseline Scenario Definition: Clear definition of what would have happened without your product, service, or activity (the “business-as-usual” case)
- Comparative Lifecycle Assessment: Demonstrate avoided emissions through ISO- and GHG Protocol-compliant analysis
- Functional Equivalence: Ensure your offering performs the same or better than the conventional alternative
- Data Quality & Uncertainty Analysis: Quantitative uncertainty evaluation of all inputs and results
- Transparent Reporting: Public disclosure of methodology, baseline assumptions, and verified results
Benefits for Your Organisation
- Climate Leadership: Demonstrate how your organisation is enabling decarbonisation beyond your own walls
- Market Differentiation: Showcase your solutions as part of the global net zero transition
- Investor & Stakeholder Appeal: Position yourself as a climate enabler, not just a compliant operator
- Narrative Strength: Turn your carbon impact story into a leadership message
- Eligibility for Product or Service-Level Certification: Supports aligned claims at the offering level
Validity and Recertification
Avoided Emissions Certification is valid for two years, with recertification requiring updated avoided emissions calculations, current market data, and review of any changes to methodology or baseline assumptions.
Avoided Carbon Emissions Certification FAQs
Avoided emissions are the greenhouse gas emissions that would have occurred under a “business-as-usual” scenario but are prevented because of your product, service, or activity. They represent the real-world climate benefit you enable for customers, users, or markets by displacing higher-carbon alternatives and driving impact beyond your own footprint.
Emissions avoidance refers to the prevention of greenhouse gas emissions that would have occurred under a conventional or business-as-usual scenario. It captures the positive impact of solutions, technologies, or services that displace higher-carbon alternatives and enable lower-carbon choices for customers, users, or markets. Emissions avoidance is the foundation of avoided emissions certification and highlights how organisations contribute to global decarbonisation beyond their own footprint.
Reduced emissions refer to cutting your own operational footprint such as lowering Scope 1, 2, or 3 emissions within your value chain. Avoided emissions describe the impact of your solution in helping others cut their emissions. Together they show both your internal decarbonisation progress and your wider contribution to the global net zero transition.
Offsets are used to compensate for emissions by funding external reduction or removal projects. Avoided emissions certification is not an offset. It verifies the inherent, measurable impact of your own solutions in preventing emissions for customers, users, or markets.
Measuring avoided emissions means comparing two scenarios: the baseline, which represents what would have happened without your solution, and the project case, which represents the emissions when your solution is used. The difference between these two is the avoided emissions. Certification requires this analysis to be ISO and GHG Protocol compliant, demonstrate functional equivalence with the conventional alternative, and include a transparent uncertainty assessment.
Certification provides independent assurance that your avoided emissions claims are accurate and verifiable. It helps you demonstrate climate leadership, build trust with stakeholders, and differentiate your solutions in a crowded market.
Any organisation that enables measurable emissions savings outside its own footprint can apply. This includes providers of clean technology, renewable energy, software and digital services, mobility and infrastructure solutions, and financial or service models that accelerate the low-carbon transition.
Certification Pathways
Download Our Certification Protocol
Download the full NCS Organisations Footprinting Protocol to learn how to measure, verify, and communicate your carbon footprint with confidence.
