Avoidance credits and removal credits

This difference matters a lot, especially for net zero claims.

• Avoidance (or reduction) credits pay for emissions that would have happened but did not. Examples: a wind farm that displaces coal power, capturing methane from a landfill, or more efficient cookstoves. The CO2 never entered the air.
• Removal credits pay for CO2 that is taken out of the air and stored. Examples: growing new forest, restoring mangroves, or engineered methods such as direct air capture with geological storage.

Removals are generally treated as more relevant for balancing the last, hard-to-cut emissions in a net zero plan. Nature-based removals (trees, soils, mangroves) can be reversed by fire, disease, felling or drought, so they carry a permanence risk (see below). Engineered removals with geological storage are more durable but, today, far smaller in volume.