Complete Means 100%—No IOUs, No Delays, No Guesswork

Sky Harvest’s vision is that the majority of credits in the voluntary carbon market will be True Credits—credits that deliver 100% complete offsets. This piece explains what “complete” really means. 

What Does “100% Complete” Mean? 

A complete credit fully offsets the cost of emitting one tonne of CO₂. Every tonne released has a measurable warming effect that lasts thousands of years. To be complete, a credit must counterbalance that effect exactly—no more, no less—with an equal and opposite climate benefit. In other words, it must be 100% emissions equivalent. 

But Don’t All Credits Do That? 

Most don’t. Even if today’s credits perform as promised, corporate portfolios often offset less than half of their actual emissions. Which means more than 50% of the emissions behind those “retired” credits still warm the atmosphere, unmitigated. 

Why? 

An obvious mismatch: carbon credits store CO₂ for a few decades but CO₂ emissions persist for millennia. Decades and millennia are not equal. Even projects with longer durations often suffer timing mismatches: they promise to offset emissions released today with removals that may not happen until 2030 or beyond. That delay means years of extra warming during the most critical window for prevention. 

How Is That Possible? 

The climate effect of greenhouse gases has three dimensions: mass, duration, and timing. You can’t measure it any other way. Yet today’s market measures only mass. It’s like trying to measure the volume of a cube with just the width—it doesn’t work. The result is credits that offset only a fraction of emissions. Realizing this gap is what led us to create Sky Harvest. 

Another way to picture it: imagine a 1,000-piece puzzle. A True Credit is every piece in its place. But today’s market looks more like 200 pieces in the box alongside an IOU for the most but not all of the rest—delivered over the subsequent decades. Even if those pieces show up 40 years later, the puzzle won’t be complete. Not a very fun puzzle. 

This isn’t to dismiss existing credits; they can provide real benefit. But it’s important to acknowledge they are fractional, not complete. 

Is This Backed by Science? 

Yes. This isn’t a Sky Harvest opinion. It is established climate science, grounded in the IPCC’s mathematical frameworks from the 1990s and reinforced by decades of peer-reviewed research. 

Restoring Carbon Credits to Their Original Purpose 

As long as the voluntary carbon market issues fractional offsets, credibility will remain in question. Buyers may not know the science, but they can intuit the mismatch between emissions that last millennia and credits that last decades. 

That’s why Sky Harvest uses the True Credit Framework: to deliver credits that are complete, not fractional. 

We invite buyers, standard-setters, and developers to join us in this vision. Because when credits are 100% complete, confidence is restored—and carbon credits can finally serve the purpose they were created for.  

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Whether you’re ready to purchase True Credits or just have a question, we’d love to hear from you.

General Inquiries

Email: info@skyharvest.com

Phone: +1 (919) 306-1883