Duke University protects its reputation with high-quality climate action

Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States renowned for its academic excellence.

In 2007, Duke University signaled its devotion to combatting climate change by setting an ambitious goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2024. Duke furthered its dedication to climate work in 2022 by initiating the Duke Climate Commitment, a comprehensive effort encompassing community engagement, education, research and operational sustainability. Though Duke has historically prioritized reducing its internal emissions, carbon credits are a necessary component of achieving their carbon neutrality goal and ensuring their approach to carbon offsets was done with integrity was critical.

Duke's sustainability office staff created a multi-step carbon credit evaluation process. They began with an RFP to project developers and assessed responses through a robust evaluation framework, as well as multiple levels of reviews by stakeholders and faculty experts. Despite a robust review process, challenges remained.

Challenges

Procuring high-quality carbon credits presented Duke with several challenges. These included:

• Ensuring additionality: Additionality was the most important aspect of Duke’s credit evaluation criteria, necessitating rigorous evaluation of project proposals.
• Managing reputational risk: As a prestigious institution, Duke aimed to safeguard its reputation by avoiding association with low-quality carbon projects.
• A time-consuming process that yielded few options: Duke's rigorous multi-step process required countless days of mulling over project details. Once projects were put through the process, their low pass rate left Duke with few credit options.

How Calyx Global helps

“We put stock in what Calyx Global thinks is high quality, and always refer to their reviews as a part of our process,“ said Matthew Arsenault, Duke’s Assistant Director of Carbon and Sustainability Operations.

To enhance their review process, Duke University explored carbon credit ratings. After a comparison and evaluation process that included demos of multiple ratings platforms and recommendations from peers, Duke ultimately chose the Calyx Global Platform to help them with:

• Improved Quality: The inclusion of Calyx Global ratings in their evaluation process increased confidence in high-quality offset projects through expert analysis and a vetted evaluation framework already used by other leading companies and universities. 
• Reinforced Reputation: Calyx Global’s deep dives helped ensure the project aligned with their goals and values. The expert analysis provided the team with additional confidence. 
• Enhanced Efficiency: The ratings platform streamlined the team’s credit discovery process, reducing the time and resources required for project evaluation through an easy platform search rather than a long RFP process.

“Calyx Global felt like a more careful review than other platforms I tried. I appreciate the depth of their evaluations and comprehensive rating system” 
– Matthew Arsenault, Assistant Director of Carbon and Sustainability Operations, Duke University  

Duke University is a prestigious institution whose reputation is built upon integrity. Making sound carbon offset choices is critical to maintaining that trust with its students, staff, faculty and the community. Calyx Global is committed to helping them continue their pursuit of excellence in climate action.