carbon-inset
DEFINITION
Carbon inset
A carbon inset is an emissions reduction made inside your own supply chain and tied to the physical commodities you buy — rather than a carbon offset, which compensates for emissions occurring somewhere else. Insets count toward supply-chain reductions; offsets increasingly do not survive audit.
Inset
Reduction inside your own supply chain
Tied to the goods you buy · lands in Scope 3
Offset
Compensation for emissions elsewhere
Detached from the goods · outside inventory
In practice
Because an inset stays attached to a real commodity flow, it can be traced to a specific purchase and retired against a specific claim. That is what makes it inventory-linked: the reduction moves with the goods and settles in the buyer’s accounts, not in a separate voluntary market.
Nset’s instrument for a carbon inset is the Carbon Inventory Certificate — verified at the source, moved by mass balance, and retired in the registry so it cannot be double counted.