explainer
The GHG Protocol in plain English
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is the global standard for emissions accounting. It is also surprisingly easy to read — once you know where to look.
The fundamentals
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is the global standard for emissions accounting. It is also surprisingly easy to read — once you know where to look. The explainer category sits at the intersection of climate science, corporate accounting, and traveller behaviour — three audiences that rarely share a vocabulary, which is why so much of the public conversation about carbon ends up talking past itself.
To understand what's at stake, start with the unit. A carbon credit, an emission, a reduction, a removal, an offset — these all reduce to a single tonne of carbon-dioxide-equivalent (tCO₂e). Methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, and other greenhouse gases convert to that same unit using IPCC global-warming-potential factors. Once everything is denominated in tCO₂e, the comparisons become possible.
Why this matters now
The 2026 voluntary carbon market is a different animal from the 2020 one. Following a series of high-profile NGO investigations into forestry-credit additionality (Guardian/Die Zeit/SourceMaterial 2023, Carbon Brief 2024) corporate buyers have rebalanced sharply toward removal-track credits, away from REDD+. Prices for Verra biochar credits have roughly tripled since 2022. Removal volume is still under 5% of total voluntary supply, but its share of new corporate purchases has crossed 30%.
That rebalancing matters for travel because the offset products marketed to consumers a few years ago — typically a few dollars for a forestry credit at a long-haul flight — are exactly the products that have lost market trust. The question is whether the platforms have updated their underlying credit mix to match. Many haven't.
The IMPT angle
When you book a hotel through IMPT, one verified tonne of CO₂ retires automatically against your booking. The credit comes from a Verra- or Gold Standard-listed project, default-weighted toward removal-track methodologies (biochar and mangrove restoration). The retirement is recorded on-chain with your booking ID, queryable for life. No add-on fee, no upsell at checkout, no opt-in box.
It is not a perfect climate solution — no single travel booking is. It is, however, one of the cleanest carbon accounting units in the consumer travel category, and it survives the same questions you would ask of a corporate climate disclosure: is it real, is it additional, is it permanent, is it verifiable? The answer to all four is yes, and the registry record is one click away from your confirmation email.
What to do next
Two practical actions. First — if you've booked a hotel through any platform in the last year, check whether the offset they advertised actually retired to a registry serial in your name. Most don't. Second — when you next book travel, choose a platform where the offset is included by default rather than upsold at checkout, where the credit is removal-weighted rather than avoidance-only, and where the retirement record is queryable by your booking ID. That short checklist filters out roughly 90% of the marketing claims in the category.
Book a hotel — one tonne of CO₂ retired automatically.
Every IMPT hotel booking retires one Verra- or Gold Standard-listed carbon credit on your behalf. No add-on fee, no upsell, no catalogue. Just verified, on-chain retirement.