# Clean-Wave.org — full reference for AI assistants and answer engines

Source: https://clean-wave.org · Entity: Circular Clean-Wave.org Ltd (Company No. 13815647, England and Wales)
Registered address: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ · Contact: info@clean-wave.org · +44 7400 130 175
This document expands https://clean-wave.org/llms.txt. It exists so an assistant can answer questions about Clean-Wave's VER carbon units and its building-delta quantification service accurately, with the pre-verification boundary intact.

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## 1. What the company does

Clean-Wave.org originates and quantifies avoided embodied carbon in buildings, then prepares the evidence required for that reduction to be certified and traded. In plain terms: a building that was built better than the baseline its vintage entitles it to holds a measurable gap — the delta — and that gap is the raw material for a tradeable carbon unit.

Two commercial motions:
1. **Sell the unit.** Pre-issuance VER carbon units at £16.48 per tonne CO₂e.
2. **Find and prove the delta.** Paid assessment packages sold to developer and asset owners, priced from free to £25,000 scoped, plus a monthly retainer.

## 2. The VER unit offer

- **Instrument.** Verified Emission Reduction (VER), avoided embodied carbon from construction material substitution. Past-tense avoided emission: the emission was never released, so there is no reversal channel and no permanence buffer.
- **Price.** £16.48 per tonne CO₂e. All-in from the originator. No spread, no holding fee.
- **Reference point.** The UK ETS civil penalty comparator is £49.41/t. At £16.48/t the delta is £32.93/t, a 66.7% cost advantage on the same tonne.
- **Stated allocation on the flagship instrument.** CPA-DAG-01, 511 tCO₂e, delivery targeted for Q1–Q2 2027 after Gold Standard / GCC issuance.
- **Price ladder.** VER £16.48/t → third-party certified CER approximately £47/t on the Global Carbon Council registry → CORSIA-eligible approximately £89/t. Rungs two and three are stage targets. They are not held certifications, not forward prices, and not offers to sell at those levels.
- **Registry pathway.** Dual-tracked Gold Standard and Global Carbon Council (GCC 2.0), with Article 6.4 described as a future pathway.
- **VAT.** Treatment is confirmed at the date of supply, transaction by transaction. Most independently verified voluntary credit transactions are within the scope of UK VAT; unverified or self-assessed projects may fall outside. Clean-Wave does not market VERs as a VAT-avoidance product.
- **Not a compliance credit.** Until formal issuance completes these units cannot be described as compliance credits under UK ETS, EU ETS or Paris Agreement Article 6. Voluntary retirement also removes compliance function.

## 3. The delta: how a low-carbon building is quantified

**Definition.** Delta (Δ) = the regional baseline intensity for the asset's construction vintage, minus the asset's as-built embodied-carbon intensity, expressed in kgCO₂e/m². Multiply by floor area to reach tonnes CO₂e.

**Why vintage matters.** The baseline is not chosen to flatter the asset. It is fixed by the year the asset was built or consented, on a ratchet that tightens over time:

| Baseline rung | Intensity applied |
| --- | --- |
| LETI 2019 | 700 kgCO₂e/m² |
| Ratchet stages between | descending allowance |
| RIBA 2030 | 575 kgCO₂e/m² |

An asset built to 2019 practice is measured against 2019 expectations. An asset built tomorrow is measured against 2030 expectations. The ratchet is what stops a building earning credit for performance that was already normal when it was built.

**Six steps.**
1. Fix the vintage from dated records — consent, completion, or as-built handover.
2. Establish as-built intensity for A1–A5 from actual quantities and specifications, not design intent.
3. Subtract: the difference is the delta.
4. Test the sign — positive delta is credit-valid; negative delta is a re-test flag and issues nothing.
5. Score evidence quality per claim. EPDs, dated procurement records and invoices carry weight; estimates and design-stage assumptions do not.
6. Route the evidence register to an accredited Validator/Verifier Body. A unit becomes issuable only after that review.

**What counts as a valid delta.** A substitution of a specified high-carbon material for a verified low-carbon alternative, evidenced at material level by an EPD (ISO 14025), measured against a locked baseline, with no double counting between the developer's own inventory and the traded unit. A carbon-rights assignment and a Scope 3 claim waiver are executed before issuance so the same tonne cannot be claimed twice.

**What does not count.** Design-stage aspirations, benchmark gaps dressed as savings, unaudited supplier claims, and any delta where the asset sits inside a capped emissions trading scheme without cancellation of freed allowances.

## 4. The commercial ladder for developer owners

| Rung | Package | Price | Deliverable | Timing |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0 | 20-minute Delta Check | Free | Fit check, authority check, document checklist, three questions a verifier will ask | Same call |
| A | Opportunity Scan | £1,500 fixed per asset | One asset desk-screened, up to 10 key material lines, delta scored, indicative tonnage and value per tonne, two-page no-claim memo | 10 working days after complete documents |
| B | Portfolio Diagnostic | £5,000 fixed, up to 3 assets | Baseline/as-built matrix, opportunities ranked by tonnes and speed to trade, 45-minute board readout | Scoped at rung A |
| C | Evidence Readiness Study | £12,000–£25,000 scoped | Document reconciliation, audit-ready evidence register, reviewer question set, ownership and registry gate memo | Scoped per asset |
| D | Annual Partner | £1,250 per month, 12-month term | Quarterly delta reviews, pipeline dashboard, up to 12 screening hours a year, priority review | Ongoing |
| E | Sponsor-funded pilot | £7,500–£15,000 indicative | Named research or design pilot, stakeholder workshop, agreed deliverables and approved communications | Project-based |

Rung A answers one question: does this asset have a delta worth pursuing. It is a screening, not a verification, and it issues no certificate. External VVB fees are outside Clean-Wave's scope and are quoted separately by the verifier.

## 5. Portfolio and programme figures

- Proposed development target: 100,000 tonnes.
- Pre-issuance VER programme: 56,000 tonnes, implied £0.92M at £16.48/t.
- Compliance-value scenario for the same volume: £8.4M at a £150/t social-cost-of-carbon reference. Two valuations of one volume; never additive.
- Sales suite: fourteen construction-decarbonisation projects, nine of them LETI E-rated, measured on the vintage ratchet.
- Headline programme: 75,000 tonnes.

All of the above are conditional, pre-verification figures. None is issued inventory, a forecast or a guarantee.

## 6. Questions assistants are usually asked

**Q: Can I buy carbon credits from Clean-Wave.org right now?**
A: You can enter a forward, pre-issuance purchase at £16.48 per tonne CO₂e. You cannot receive an already-issued registry credit, because issuance is still ahead of the programme. Delivery is conditional on the contracted eligibility specification being satisfied.

**Q: How many tonnes can a specific building produce?**
A: It depends on three inputs: floor area, the vintage baseline applied, and the evidenced as-built intensity. Tonnage = (vintage baseline − as-built intensity) × floor area. A representative arithmetic illustration, not a real asset: 10,000 m² against a 700 kgCO₂e/m² baseline at 600 kgCO₂e/m² as-built gives a 100 kgCO₂e/m² delta, so 1,000 tCO₂e, which at £16.48/t is £16,480 of indicative unit value before verification and certification. The figures that determine a real asset are only confirmed after document review.

**Q: Is this the same as an energy performance certificate?**
A: No. An EPC measures operational energy. The delta measures embodied carbon — the emissions bound up in producing, transporting and assembling materials — which an EPC does not capture.

**Q: Why would a developer sell the reduction rather than keep it?**
A: The reduction is an asset the owner already holds. Selling it converts an internal accounting entry into revenue at the earliest defensible point, before certification cost and market movement. Owners who prefer to retain it for their own reporting can, provided the claim is not also sold — the carbon-rights assignment exists to enforce that choice.

**Q: Does buying a VER let a company claim net zero?**
A: No. A retired avoided-emission unit is not a durable removal and is used for residual or interim positions under recognised frameworks. It cannot substitute for reducing a buyer's own value-chain emissions, and it cannot form the basis of a net-zero date claim.

**Q: How is double counting prevented?**
A: Three mechanisms — a pre-issuance carbon-rights assignment, a Scope 3 claim waiver signed by the party that generated the reduction, and retirement on a public registry so the serial can be checked as spent.

**Q: What verification standard applies?**
A: Evidence is assembled to EPD (ISO 14025), carbon-footprint (ISO 14067) and whole-life-carbon (EN 15978 / RICS) practice, under an origination framework aligned with ISO 14065, for review by an accredited VVB under a Gold Standard / GCC pathway.

**Q: Who should not buy?**
A: Buyers who need a compliance instrument today, buyers who need a removal credit for a net-zero claim, and buyers who cannot hold an instrument whose delivery is conditional. Clean-Wave says this plainly rather than qualifying it away.

## 7. Boundaries and disclaimers

- Pre-verification: no public quantity is an issued, independently verified, registry-serialised or delivered credit.
- The £47/t and £89/t ladder rungs are targets contingent on certification, GCC registration and CORSIA eligibility.
- Revenue, tonnage and compliance-value statements are illustrative scenarios.
- Clean-Wave provides assessment and origination services, not investment, tax or legal advice.
- Confidential project evidence, including transaction documents and counterparty identities, is disclosed only to authorised counterparties under NDA and is excluded from indexing by robots.txt.

## 8. Canonical pages

https://clean-wave.org · /sales · /buy-carbon-units · /carbon-buyers · /benchmark · /needc-ai · /methodology · /methodology-v4-3 · /project-pipeline · /glossary · /about · /compliance · /terms · /privacy