Whats the process for vetting a high-quality carbon offset?
CP: That’s a really good question. Last year, with our consultants, we reviewed about 100 projects. From the outset we wanted projects that were verified by a third party— something that met a very high standard of additionality (because they were verified by a third party that said, ‘yes, indeed, this meets the standard of additionality’), in areas where Yahoo! has presence, and in projects that are significant and meaningful to Yahoo! and Yahoo!’s impacts. That’s one of the reasons why we focused on India and Brazil, where we have presence, and why we focused on alternative energy projects like wind and small scale run-of-river hydro. The projects that we’ve invested in are verified emission reduction projects, so they’ve been reviewed through the same protocol that they’re using for credits that are traded through the Kyoto Protocol. They’re reviewed by folks who have been thinking a lot about what additionality is and have looked at a lot of projects. So we’re confident that they m
