Handled properly, the carbon offset market offers real reductions in greenhouse emissions. However, one of the funadamental blocks to the wider uptake of carbon offsetting is the question: "What happens to my money... How can I be sure that the money I gave was spent on a carbon abatement projects?"A very good question indeed. And this is the question answered by C-Through.C-Through functions for carbon offsets that rely on the purchase and surrender of carbon credits.

Below is an example of the sort of information proesented through the My Clean Sky process.

C-Through allows for the full transactional history of the carbon credits used to offset a client's emissions to be easily made available. The explanation below relates to how the Process could be used by the My Clean Sky online carbon offset service using carbon credits purchased through the Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme (GGAS).

The same process can be used for any service provider using any carbon trading scheme that has a registry with public access. It is believed that, at present, only the GGAS scheme has this facility. Against a clients greenhouse emissions, My Clean Sky purchases and retires carbon credits known as NGACs from the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme. There are seven steps to the Process: Step 1: Carbon credits are purchased and retired. Ideally, this would be done before the carbon offset transaction takes place, although it can also be done afterwards. Step 2: The identification (ID) numbers of these credits are entered into the My Clean Sky database (e.g. one carbon credit ID might be: 2006-01387756). Step 3: Each carbon credit is allocated 1,000 virtual carbon credits nominally referred to as Virtual Carbon Credits (VCC). Each VCC has a carbon value of 1kg CO2e. This is because My Clean Sky buys carbon credits each worth a ton CO2e (1,000 kg CO2e), but sells carbon offset by the kilogram. Note: by allocating 1,000,000 VCC's to each carbon credit is possible to offset by the gram. Step 4: A number of VCCs are assigned to each carbon offset purchase. For example, if the emissions from a single passenger on an air trip between Townsville and Brisbane return is 720 kg CO2e, then 720 VCCs will be assigned to offset those emissions. Note: under this system, a single carbon offset may include VCCs assigned to more than one carbon credit, and a single carbon credit may account for more than one carbon offset transaction. Step 5: The carbon offset purchaser receives an offset certificate stating the total kilograms of emissions offset and a unique offset transaction reference code . Step 6: The client enters this reference code into the online My Clean Sky registry in the field provided and presses the Submit button. The database will then display the total number of VCCs assigned to that particular carbon offset and show the carbon credit numbers to which those VCCs are assigned. For example, the database might show that a carbon offset transaction of 20kg CO2e may have been assigned 20 VCCs from carbon credit number 2006-01387756. This would then leave 980 VCCs available against this carbon credit number for other offset transactions. Step 7: The client ‘copies' one of the carbon credit numbers from the registry webpage and follows the hyperlinks to the entry page of the GGAS. Instructions are made available for the client to enter the GGAS registry as a Guest. The client ‘pastes' their carbon credit number in the “Find Facility”. Then the GGAS registry (see graphic, right) will show the full details of the carbon credit. The details shown by the Registry include:

This is the information that can authenticate the veracity of the claims of a carbon offset provider that a proportion of their carbon offset fee has been used to abate carbon emissions.