ACU is the first carbon neutral credit union in Manitoba

ACU is recognized as a climate change leader within the Manitoba business community and our credit union peers.

This is why we support environmental groups focused on climate change solutions in our granting program and commit to business initiatives like the recently launched BizforClimate – an organization promoting positive actions to address the climate crisis.

In 2018 ACU became the first carbon neutral credit union in Manitoba and the first Canadian organization to purchase Fairtrade Certified offsets. Since becoming carbon neutral, we have purchased 2300 tonnes of greenhouse gas emission offsets.

Carbon Neutral in 2022

A total of 1000 tonnes of offsets for our 2022 emissions were purchased from three different projects.

We purchased 300 tonnes of Fair Trade Certified Gold Standard offsets, 211 tonnes of offsets from the SunCulture Solar Water Pumps project, Africa’s first solar irrigation carbon project, and 489 tonnes from the Katingan REDD+ Forest Protection project, which is helping to protect and restore 149,800 hectares of peatland ecosystems.

ACU follows an internationally recognized protocol to identify significant sources of our business-related GHG emissions. We use data from Manitoba Hydro, our suppliers and service providers, and employee surveys to calculate our annual GHG emissions. We use tools and training from Climate Smart to estimate our annual emissions.

ACU is committed to being transparent on our environmental performance and climate actions. Our actions and performance are evaluated in our B Corp Assessment, click here to view the results.

The offset purchase amount is equivalent to ACU’s annual corporate emissions for energy consumed at our locations, employee commuting, business travel, office paper member statements and waste to landfill.

Every year we purchase high quality offsets meeting very stringent international certification standards and aligned to our values-based banking commitments.

ACU works to reduce our GHG emissions wherever possible, and we purchase carbon offsets for those emissions we cannot prevent. Purchasing carbon credits is another way to take climate action beyond our local areas of influence.

Learn more about how ACU reduces its GHG emissions.