A website offers a carbon or green certificate for a fee. Is it worth buying?
Usually not. A buyer or lender values numbers that can be traced to your bills, and a verification statement from an accredited body. A certificate issued after a short online form, with no evidence checked, proves little. Check who issues it and whether anyone looked at your data.
Questions to ask before paying
- Which standard does it follow, for example ISO 14064-1?
- Is the issuer accredited to verify under ISO 14065?
- Will they look at your bills and invoices, or only a form?
- Will the result name your figures, boundary and period?
What holds up instead
An inventory built from your own records, and if a buyer asks, a verification statement from an accredited verifier.
What Senseible does here
Senseible keeps each figure behind a claim traceable to the invoices and bills it came from, so a reader can check the number rather than take the wording on trust.
Sources: ISO 14064-3 and ISO 14065 (iso.org), GHG Protocol Corporate Standard
Last reviewed 2026-10-23.