What will Canopy do for you?
100% carbon offset products and services are increasingly popular with customers. A registered tree-planting program is a great way to unify your workforce and be a responsible corporate citizen.
What can you do?
Everyone can make a difference. You don’t have to plant a whole forest, but the steps you take as an individual, the ‘seeds that you plant’ are vital in helping to reduce greenhouse gases
How do you know we'll actually plant the trees?
We are externally audited annually. For amounts above 250 tonnes CO2, you will have a legal agreement with map coordinates.
If you give access to land to plant trees, what’s in it for you?
We’ll plant and care for them for five years at no cost to you. We’ll register the trees on the land title for you so that future owners can’t remove them. You get the windbreaks and shelterbelts you want as well as salt mitigation and weed control. We can plant for you and help you sell the trees into the carbon market. You can keep some or all of the carbon credits.
Is Canopy in it for the long haul?
Canopy is creating plant communities that are designed to be permanently self sustaining. While we plan to be around to watch them grow, we know that things change, which is why we have protected our plantings with careful design and powerful legal structures. Permanence matters.
How can you be sure the trees will live?
Canopy recreates self-sufficient plant communities that can look after themselves and the trees we plant have a life span of 100's of years. It’s all about putting back the vegetation that grew there before and guaranteeing it over the first five years.
What if drought or other conditions affect the survival of your trees?
Canopy plants drought-tolerant species and we guarantee that they will all be there after five years. We replace trees wherever necessary.
What happens if you sell the land?
The carbon in the trees can be registered on the land titles as your property. Anyone who acquires the land is legally bound to observe that.
How can you receive carbon credits now for trees that haven’t been planted yet?
The carbon sequestration from those trees will not occur for years. All ‘carbon credits’ require that a forest must live on for, say, 100 years beyond the date that they were acquired. Your trees will be planted in the next winter and your registered right over the carbon is permanent. For those who require carbon that is already in a tree now, click here.
What happens to the carbon credits when you buy them? Are they actual credits of value that you can trade?
If you are buying them to offset your emissions, they are ‘retired’ at purchase (see below) and can’t be resold. If you want to buy or create credits to trade, click here.
What does it mean to ‘retire’ your credits?
Let’s say that your car produces three tonnes CO2 a year and you want to neutralise that. If you buy and retire three tonnes CO2, the equation balances out. If you buy three tonnes for your car and then gave the same three tonnes of CO2 credits to your friend for her car, that is double counting which unbalances the result.
Isn’t it better to reduce my carbon emissions rather than ‘buy’ credits to offset them? Isn’t this concept just one more way that people can buy a clear conscience rather than actually change their lifestyle?
Indeed. While we love our trees, it would be better if everyone cut their emissions. Offsets are just a way to fill in the gaps you can’t otherwise attend to. We ask that all our corporate customers commit to a 10% emissions reduction program before they can join Canopy. We want everyone to audit themselves, avoid energy use, reduce energy use, reuse, recycle, switch to renewable energy and then revegetate to fill in the gaps. There will be no need to buy CO2 to offset your car if you decide to ride a bike.