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Sustainable community: local projects, big impact!

Help SMEs & municipalities in Quebec to reduce emissions with economic incentives and collective intelligence

Climate impact

Reduction

Solution

Buildings

Location

Canada

Evaluation

VERRA/VCS

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ABOUT

Learn more about the
project

This project is all about strength in numbers. The Sustainable Community helps small organizations pull together to reduce their emissions and be rewarded for it.

Canada has more than 1.3 million small and medium-sized companies and 6,000 government organizations that don’t have access to incentives to reduce their emissions. When small organizations reduce their emissions, by switching to renewable energy for example, they can’t trade these reductions on the carbon market because they’re difficult to quantify and sell.

The Sustainable Community project lets these organizations pool their individual emission reductions, making them easier to monitor, measure, and sell on the carbon market. Each carbon credit sold by the Community helps local organizations to invest in solar panels, geothermal systems, sustainable waste management, and much more.

By contributing to the Sustainable Community project, you’ll support businesses and other organizations in carrying out hundreds of small emission reduction projects. The project also acts as a catalyst for climate actions that engage the local community.

Solutions Will

The Sustainable Community is a local and circular solution that brings together micro-projects to reduce carbon emissions from SMEs, organizations and communities. On the one hand, it stimulates carbon reduction projects for small GHG emitters. On the other hand, it converts the tonnes of CO2 reduced at source into carbon credits, and allows other players to get financially involved in the fight against climate change.

ASSESSMENT

Everything about this project at a glance.

Climate impact

Reduction

How to read this

Our atmosphere is like a bathtub, which we have been filling for decades with greenhouse gasses. Each ton of CO2e in the tub increases the global temperature and affects the climate.

In order to prevent our bathtub from spilling - which would mean reaching a +2°C temperature increase - 3 types of actions exist:

Reduction: These projects reduce emissions, closing the tap and slowing down the filling of the tub (e.g. switching to more efficient fuels)

Avoidance: These projects preventing future emissions, stopping a new tap from being opened (e.g. protecting forests and peatlands so that they don’t start releasing CO2)

Removal: These projects remove and capture greenhouse gasses, emptying the bathtub (e.g. reforestation and direct air capture technology)

Solution

Buildings

How to read this

Solutions are different ways we can reduce, avoid and remove our emissions. They vary in terms of cost, level of maturity, potential to scale, and other factors. To make comparisons easier, Sweep groups solutions into categories such as Forests, Geoengineering or Buildings. Climate solutions are numerous: to learn more about what can be done, explore our catalog.

Location

Canada

How to read this

Solutions can be deployed in a large range of locations, from a micro-regions to entire sections of a continent. You might want to focus your contributions on specific areas to maximize local socioeconomic impacts or contribute where your activities are based.

Evaluation

Certified • VERRA/VCS

How to read this

Various international and regional standards rely on established methodologies, dedicated processes and third-party verifications to guarantee that a project delivers on its promises.

Certified: Standards, such as Gold Standard or Verra, are listed for maximal transparency

Not certified yet: The process to be certified is expensive and cumbersome, and ad-hoc methodologies might not exist for specific projects, preventing them from being certified. Sweep promotes other projects after a necessary due diligence, bringing more projects to a wider audience while also offering opportunities to develop and tailor new projects according to your own needs.

Capacity

2Mt

How to read this

Capacity is the projected volume of tCO2e reduced or removed during the crediting period. This indicates the projected net impact of a project after adjusting for potential negative impacts and other externalities. This is key to assessing the current scale of a project and can give a quick estimate of what the considered volumes represent at the project scale.

Capacity does not reflect the available quantity of credits as some of them can already be sold.

Crediting Period

2010 - 2029

How to read this

Certified projects are eligible to generate carbon credits over a certain period of time. This crediting period gives a good estimate of the progress of a project.

Older crediting periods means that projects have delivered their promises and that third-party auditors have recognized the climate impact

Crediting periods covering coming years may have already been audited for a fraction of the volumes. The rest will be generated along future audits.

Co-benefits

6 SDGs

6 SDGs

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

The social and environmental impact of all Sustainable Community micro-projects goes far beyond the quantitative aspect. WILL has identified five main social and environmental impacts on the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SDG 10: Reducing Inequality

9,53% of the Quebec's population, mainly in remote area, has participated to the group project.

How to read this

Projects often have positive side effects beyond reducing, removing, or avoiding emissions. For example, projects might reduce waste, protect biodiversity, or support indigenous people. These co-benefits are modelled after the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Durability

N/A

How to read this

Durability only applies to to removal solutions. It indicates for how long the carbon will be removed from the atmosphere - the longer this is the more desirable. For example, storing carbon as mineral underground is more durable than in a tree, making it a less risky and longer term solution.

Financial additionality

High

How to read this

Additionality reveals the impact of your financial support. It indicates what percentage of the global project budget is coming from contributions.

High additionality means most of the project revenue relies on contributions, and they would likely not be able to happen without this financing.

Low additionality projects are less reliant on contributions.

Other additionality criteria, such as policy or regulatory additionality, are tackled through certifications and not assessed here

Barriers

Medium

The total project barrier score is available when all types of barrier are provided. It is a composite score based on the 5 barriers assessed.

Technical
Medium
Financial
High
Social
Low
Political
Low
Economical
Low

The solutions rolled out have been proven for a long time but the adoption rate is slowed by the important costs

How to read this

Barriers are the different hurdles a project might need to overcome. Barriers can give you a sense for the challenges a project faces, but also how it can add deeper value and create change. We differentiate five types of barriers: economic, social, institutional, technical and financial.

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