PAS 2060 was the British Standards Institution’s specification for the demonstration of carbon neutrality. For over a decade it was the most widely used carbon neutrality standard in the UK. It was withdrawn in November 2025 and superseded by ISO 14068-1. This page is a reference: it covers what PAS 2060 Section 9 required of the carbon credits used in a neutrality claim — the offset rules — and, at the foot of the page, what changes for offsetting now that ISO 14068-1 has replaced it. If your organisation made a PAS 2060 claim, this is the ground you are transitioning from.
PAS 2060 was a Publicly Available Specification published by the British Standards Institution. The version in force at its withdrawal was PAS 2060:2014. It set out how an entity could demonstrate carbon neutrality for an organisation, a product, a service, an event, a building, or a town — through a four-stage cycle of quantification, reduction, offsetting of residual emissions, and a documented declaration of achievement. For more than a decade it was the de facto carbon neutrality standard in the UK, underpinning a very large number of public neutrality claims.
This page is deliberately scoped to one part of that specification: Section 9, “Offsetting residual GHG emissions”. Section 9 is where PAS 2060 set the rules for the carbon credits used to neutralise the emissions an entity could not yet eliminate — the offset-quality requirements and the documentation needed to substantiate them. It is the part of the standard that maps most directly onto the way credits are sourced and disclosed today, and the part most relevant to any organisation transitioning a legacy PAS 2060 claim onto its successor.
The status point matters and is stated plainly throughout: PAS 2060 was withdrawn in November 2025 and is no longer a standard against which a current neutrality claim should be made. It was superseded by ISO 14068-1, the first international standard for carbon neutrality. We retain this reference because a great deal of real-world documentation, contracts, and prior-year claims still reference PAS 2060, and because understanding what it required is the starting point for a clean transition. Where this page describes a requirement, it describes what PAS 2060 required — in the past tense, by design.
Before any credit criterion, §9.1 set the framing obligation: the entity had to reconcile the amount of carbon credit required to offset its reduced emissions in order to achieve carbon neutrality, and identify and document the standard and methodology used.
§9.1.1 — Reconciliation of the offset quantity
The entity had to reconcile the amount of carbon credit required to offset the reduced greenhouse gas emissions in order to achieve carbon neutrality. The word “reduced” carried the weight: offsetting applied to the emissions remaining after reduction, not to a gross, un-reduced footprint. The quantity of credits retired had to match the residual figure being neutralised — no more, no less.
§9.1.2 — Identify and document the standard and methodology
The entity had to identify and document the standard and methodology used to achieve its carbon offset. Critically, this applied in all cases — including where offset projects supported by charities were used. The methodology and the types of credits employed had to meet the seven principles set out below. There was no exemption for philanthropic or in-kind offset arrangements: the same offset-quality bar applied to all of them.
§9.1.3 — Presumed-conforming schemes
Schemes identified in Annex C, Table C.2 of the specification could be presumed to meet the §9.1.2 principles — although other schemes that met the requirement could also be used. Where a listed scheme was used, the entity still had to confirm and record that its use of the selected scheme did not conflict with those principles. The presumption was a convenience, not a waiver: the principles remained the test.
These are the offset-quality criteria at the heart of Section 9. Read them as the PAS 2060 ancestor of the credit criteria in ISO 14068-1 §11.2 and the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles — the same concerns, in the language of 2014.
§9.1.2(a) — Genuine, additional reductions elsewhere
Credits generated, or allowance credits surrendered, had to represent genuine, additional GHG emission reductions elsewhere. This is the additionality principle in its earliest standardised form: the reduction had to be real and would not have happened anyway. It is the direct ancestor of the “additional” criterion in ISO 14068-1 §11.2 and of the additionality limb of the screening process used today.
§9.1.2(b) — Additionality, permanence, leakage, double counting
Projects involved in delivering carbon credits had to meet the criteria of additionality, permanence, leakage and double counting. These four words carry almost the entire modern quality agenda. The specification’s own note pointed to the WRI GHG Protocol for Project Accounting and the WRI Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard for the definitions of these four terms.
→ Maps to: ISO 14068-1 §11.2 (additional, permanent) · §11.3(g) (double counting, leakage) · screening criteria 2, 3 & 4.
§9.1.2(c) — Independent third-party verification
Carbon credits had to be verified by an independent third-party verifier. This is the assurance-chain principle: the claimed reduction could not rest on the developer’s own word. It is the ancestor of the independent-verification requirement in ISO 14068-1 §11.3(f) and of the verification-and-certification check in the screening process.
§9.1.2(d) — Ex-post issuance only
Credits from carbon offset projects could only be issued after the emission reduction associated with the offset project had taken place. This prohibited forward-crediting: no claiming a reduction before it had happened. ISO 14068-1 carries the same ex-post principle in its §11.1 prohibition on using contracted future reductions until certified, issued, and retired.
§9.1.2(e) — Retirement within 12 months
Credits from offset projects, other than events, had to be retired within 12 months of the date of the declaration of achievement. For events, the period of retirement was to be as short as could reasonably be achieved, and not more than 36 months. This is the timeliness principle: a neutrality claim could not be left indefinitely un-reconciled against retired credits.
§9.1.2(f) — Publicly available project documentation
Credits had to be supported by publicly available project documentation on a registry or equivalent publicly available record, providing information about the offset project, the quantification methodology, and the validation and verification procedures. This is the transparency principle — the requirement that an outside party be able to inspect the project behind the credit.
→ Maps to: ISO 14068-1 §11.3(g) public registry & traceability · screening criterion 4 (registry & double-counting).
§9.1.2(g) — Stored and retired in a credible registry
Credits from carbon offset projects had to be stored and retired in an independent and credible registry, or equivalent publicly available record. Together with (f), this established the registry-and-retirement infrastructure requirement — the same architecture that ISO 14068-1 §11.3(g) later set out in far more technical detail, requiring unique serial numbers, permanent-retirement procedures, and traceability back to the project.
§9.2 required the entity to prepare documentation substantiating the carbon offset. These six items are the PAS 2060 ancestor of the ISO 14068-1 §11.4 documented-information requirements — and of the disclosure pack delivered with every transaction today.
§9.2(a) — Which emissions were offset
The documentation had to record which GHG emissions had been offset. This tied the retired credits to a specific, identified body of residual emissions — not to a vague or open-ended claim.
§9.2(b) — The actual amount of carbon credit required
The documentation had to state the actual amount of carbon credit required. Read with §9.1.1, this is the reconciliation evidence: the quantity of credits had to be shown to match the residual emissions being neutralised.
§9.2(c) — Type of offset and projects involved
The documentation had to identify the type of offset and the projects involved. This is the project-identification requirement — the item whose modern absence the “Buying Blind?” analysis of CSRD disclosures showed to be so damaging. PAS 2060 asked for it in 2014.
§9.2(d) — Confirmation of scheme use without conflict
The documentation had to confirm that the carbon offset scheme was used in accordance with its provisions, and that there was no conflict with the §9.1.2 principles. This is the conformance attestation: a positive statement that the scheme’s own rules had been followed and that they did not conflict with the offset principles.
§9.2(e) — Number, type, period and retirement date of credits
The documentation had to record the number and type of carbon credits used, the time period over which the credits had been generated, and the date of retirement. This is the vintage-and-retirement record.
→ Maps to: ISO 14068-1 §11.4 documented information · disclosure pack: credit count, type, vintage, retirement date.
§9.2(f) — Retirement evidence and a registry link
The documentation had to include information regarding the retirement or cancellation of carbon credits sufficient to prevent their use by others — including a link to the registry where the credit had been retired. This is the anti-double-use requirement, and it explicitly asked for the registry link.
→ Maps to: ISO 14068-1 §11.4 · disclosure pack: registry link & serial numbers, retirement in the client’s legal entity name.
PAS 2060 §9 and ISO 14068-1 §11 share the same DNA: reduce first, offset the residual with verified, additional, permanent, registry-listed credits, and document it. What changed is rigour, structure, and international authority — scoped here, as on the rest of this page, to offsetting only.
1 — From referenced definitions to normative criteria
PAS 2060 §9.1.2(b) named additionality, permanence, leakage and double counting, then pointed to the WRI Protocols for the definitions. ISO 14068-1 internalises them: §11.2 sets out the credit criteria and §11.3 the programme criteria as normative “shall” requirements in the standard’s own text. The concepts are the same; the standard now defines and mandates them directly rather than by cross-reference.
2 — A formal reduce-first hierarchy
PAS 2060 placed offsetting after reduction in its cycle and reconciled against “reduced” emissions. ISO 14068-1 §11.1 hardens this into an explicit, documented hierarchy: reduce, then remove within the boundary, then offset — with the reasons for not going further required to be justified and documented. Buying credits without a documented reduction effort is non-conformant in a way PAS 2060 implied but did not formalise.
3 — New: safeguards and SDG identification
This is the clearest substantive addition. PAS 2060 §9 had no explicit social-and-environmental safeguards principle and no SDG requirement. ISO 14068-1 §11.3(b) requires programme safeguards for ecosystems, biodiversity, communities, human rights and local economies; §11.3(c) requires identification of the SDGs each project contributes to. Offset quality now formally includes who and what the project affects, not only the tonnes.
4 — A removals-first signal for residual emissions
PAS 2060 treated reduction-based and removal-based credits largely alike at the offset stage. ISO 14068-1 §11.1 adds a “should” recommendation that, where only residual emissions remain, the entity uses removal-based credits rather than avoidance credits — signalling the direction of travel for portfolio composition that PAS 2060 did not address.
5 — Explicit corresponding-adjustment basis
PAS 2060 addressed double counting in general terms. ISO 14068-1 §11.1’s note explicitly identifies corresponding adjustments under Paris Agreement Article 6 as the mechanism for avoiding double counting between buyers and host-country governments — the normative basis for sovereign, CA-backed credits that PAS 2060 had no equivalent for.
6 — Same documentation intent, normative form, international authority
The §9.2 documentation items carry over almost intact into §11.4 — which emissions, how many credits, which projects and methodologies, vintage, retirement date, and registry evidence. The substance barely changes. What changes is that the requirements now sit in an international ISO standard recognised by assurance providers and regulators worldwide, rather than in a withdrawn national specification. For a transitioning organisation, the documentation it kept for PAS 2060 is largely the documentation ISO 14068-1 expects — restructured to §11.4 and supplemented with safeguards and SDG evidence.
Most of a rigorous PAS 2060 offset process carries straight into ISO 14068-1 §11. We identify what transfers, what needs supplementing — safeguards, SDG identification, the reduce-first justification — and deliver a disclosure pack structured to the live standard. The 30-minute discovery call is the starting point.