What is a Sollar?
A sollar is equivalent to 1Kg of Co2 emission reductions. It is used by mysollars.com as a currency allowing you to offset or compensate your carbon footprint by investing in carbon positive projects. |
What is carbon offsetting?
Carbon offsetting involves investing in projects that prevent or reduce emissions being released thus counterbalancing the emissions associated with your daily life or your business. These projects must comply with strict rules to ensure they are of the highest quality and actually deliver what they promise. |
How do I get Sollars?
You can either buy Sollars or get them free by participating by taking positive actions. We will also regularly hold special campaigns that will allow you to gain Sollars by, for example, inviting your friends. |
Where is the money going?
The money invested in Sollars is directly impacting the renewable energy projects. These projects must comply with stringent rules to ensure they are of the highest quality and actually deliver what they promise. MySollars.com retains a small commission and passes the rest to the Carbon Wholesaler. |
Will offsetting solve the issue of climate change?
The only way to slow or stop temperature rise due to manmade activities is to restrict the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and to examine ways to reduce our emissions as much as possible. Offsetting is only one part of a balanced approach to addressing the issue of climate change. While offsetting doesn’t reduce emissions directly, it allows projects to occur that either take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or avoid its release. Offsetting also helps to raise awareness of the issue of climate change and the impact that our lifestyles have on the environment. Also, because offsetting involves a transfer of technologies and knowledge, it supports developing countries to move towards a more sustainable development path. |
How are carbon offsets / projects guaranteed?
In order to ensure the quality and integrity of carbon offsets, a reliable program of standards, verification processes and registries have been put in place. High quality offsets are validated by the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS), Gold Standard (GS), CarbonFix, and the Carbon, Community and Biodiversity Standard (CCBS). Each of these standards has specific requirements to ensure the emissions reductions they generate are real, measurable, permanent and additional, i.e. they would not have happened without carbon finance. In each case the requirements are being approved by an independent auditor such as TÜV, SGS or DNV. |
What are the different carbon markets?
Carbon markets exist under both compliance schemes and as voluntary programs. Compliance markets are created and regulated by mandatory national, regional or international carbon reduction regimes. For the compliance market it is the UNFCCC that guarantess the quality of the credits. Voluntary markets function outside of compliance markets and enable companies and individuals to purchase carbon offsets on a voluntary basis with no intended use for compliance purposes. In the voluntary market private institutions such as the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS), CarbonFix or the Gold Standard Foundation (GS) ultimately guarantee for the integrity of credits developed under their standard. |
What is climate neutrality?
Numerous activities like car driving, air travel, energy consumption through fossil fuels and deforestation, result in CO2 emissions. These greenhouse gases end up in the atmosphere and cause global warming. Climate neutrality means that while some of your activities produce emissions you finance the reduction or avoidance of the same amount of emissions in some other place and thus neutralize the negative impact on our climate. |
What is the Gold Standard?
The Gold Standard is an award winning certification standard for carbon mitigation projects, recognized internationally as the benchmark for quality in both the compliance and voluntary carbon markets. The Gold Standard is the standard of choice for multiple governments, multinationals and the United Nations and the only certification standard trusted and endorsed by more than 80 NGOs worldwide. |
What is global warming?
Global Warming describes is current trend in average temperatures around the world increasing as a result of human activity. Using temperature measurements from historical records and current land and sea stations, in conjunction with satellite data; any doubt as to whether our planet is warming has been dispelled. Sea ice is retreating, glaciers are melting, species are migrating or disappearing and spring temperatures are arriving earlier each year. |
What human activities are linked to global warming?
Unfortunately, just about everything connected with modern society is a contributor. The cars we drive spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as does coal powered electricity generation, production processes for many of our goods. Even the millions of livestock we keep for food play their part by producing methane. |
Hotter weather sounds good, what's the problem with climate change?
I don't like cold weather myself, but remember that Nature maintains a fine balance for a reason. Sudden changes in climate related to global warming will include: • rapid melting of glaciers - loss of freshwater for humans, plants and animals that rely upon a steady flow • extinction of plant and animals species that are very sensitive to temperature and unable to migrate • tropical pests moving further south, bringing disease with them such as malaria • low lying communities and countries being inundated by the see • increased cyclones and hurricanes in some areas, severe drought in others. • loss of habitat for animals such as the polar bear • increased conflict among humans due to competition for resources |