Chevrolet purchasing and retiring up to $5M in carbon credits to help 11 colleges pay for efficiency projects

18 November 2014

Chevrolet is purchasing carbon credits worth up to $5 million to help 11 colleges in the US pay for energy efficiency-based carbon reductions. The GM brand will retire the carbon credits to benefit the climate instead of using them to offset the emissions of Chevrolet vehicles or operations.

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As part of its voluntary initiative to reduce 8 million metric tons of carbon from being emitted, Chevrolet during the last four years has supported US communities in aggressively and ingeniously reducing their carbon footprint.

Campuses for the first time can access funding from the US carbon market to fuel their large-scale energy efficiency efforts toward even greater progress, effectively using carbon performance methodologies Chevrolet developed to make money via their greenhouse gas reductions that result from energy efficiency.

As we kept inching closer to our carbon-reduction goal, we wanted to support colleges going above and beyond to help combat climate change, and open the door for other companies to contribute to such campus clean energy projects. This helps ensure campuses can continue to receive funding from companies’ carbon purchases long after Chevrolet completes its carbon-reduction initiative next year.

For the last two years, Chevrolet has been the largest US corporate buyer of voluntary carbon credits by volume, according to nonprofit Forest Trends Ecosystem Marketplace. Of the nearly 8.2 million tons contracted from 36 projects, 69% have been retired. The balance is scheduled to be retired summer of 2015.

Chevrolet partnered with these colleges for their clean-energy performance: Ball State University; Valencia College; Portland State University; Spelman College; University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point; Boston University; Rochester Institute of Technology; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Grand Valley State University; and Southern Oregon University.