Double Declaration Protocol · v2.1
Declare what you were going to do anyway. Commit to twice as much. Revoke the second one. Your avoided emission cancels your actual emission, and GuiltFree issues a certificate confirming the result is net zero. No trees. No projects. No waiting.
The supply problem
Trees are slow, flammable, and inconveniently located somewhere that is not here. Many of them were already standing, which raises awkward questions.
Someone, somewhere downstream, has to be paid to do something. This introduces cost, intermediaries, and a paper trail.
The most persistent obstacle in the sector. GuiltFree is the first protocol to treat it as optional rather than foundational.
How it works
The reduction and the emission are located inside the same person. This removes the need for a counterparty.
State the thing you were going to do regardless. Honesty at this stage is encouraged but not structurally necessary.
Your baseline scenario is revised upward. Your counterfactual self now intends to do it twice. This is the scenario against which you will be measured.
Cancel the second one. This is the difficult part. You have now generated a verified avoided emission, exactly equal to the thing you are about to do.
Your avoided emission is retired against your performed emission. Net zero. The certificate is issued before you have finished reading this sentence.
The instrument
No account required. Nothing is transmitted anywhere, which is also true of the emissions.
Select a common activity or describe your own.
Under DDP, the relevant counterfactual is not what you intended to do. It is what you have now declared you intend to do: it, twice.
You are committed to 2× it. Revoking one instance is a real and measurable reduction against your declared baseline. It is also the entire product.
Avoided emissions on completion: 0.0 kg CO₂e
GuiltFree
Issued under the Double Declaration Protocol and attested by the declarant. This certificate records a reduction against a baseline established by the party claiming the reduction. No emissions were prevented in the production of this document. Not transferable, not tradeable, not real.
Scan with a wallet that supports OpenID4VCI. The credential is an SD-JWT VC, so you can later present the net-zero outcome while withholding the baseline that produced it.
Open in a wallet on this deviceThe mathematics
Let B be the emission you were always going to produce. Declare 2B. Revoke B. You emit B and you avoid B. The books close at zero and no one has to plant anything.
The registry
Retirements are written to this browser's local storage, where they cannot be independently verified by any party, including us. This prevents double counting by preventing counting.
The verifier
Each certificate is checked against its issuer's published key, and each disclosure against the digests the issuer signed. Nothing is trusted because it looks official.
One per line, or separated by spaces or commas.
Scan with a wallet holding GuiltFree certificates. Each must prove possession of the key it was issued to. The code carries only a pointer to the request, so several can be presented at once whether you scan it or open it here.
Open in a wallet on this devicePreparing a request…
| Across everything checked | kg CO₂e |
|---|---|
| Baseline, as declared by the holder | — |
| Revoked, and so counted as avoided | — |
| Actually performed | — |
| Net change in atmospheric CO₂e | — |
Declarants
“I offset a transatlantic flight while still at the gate. I did not board the second plane.”Dana KirchhoffFrequent declarant
“Our entire department is now net zero. We simply doubled everything and then didn't.”Prof. Milo TarrantInstitute for Applied Counterfactuals
“Considerably cheaper than a tree, and it arrives instantly.”Sasha VogelCFO, Northbrand Logistics
Declarants are fictional. So, in a meaningful sense, are their reductions.
The browser extension watches for the moment you complete a purchase, doubles it, revokes the duplicate, and issues your certificate before the confirmation email arrives. Guilt is resolved in the same session in which it was incurred.
Nothing leaves your machine. There is nothing to send.
Order confirmed · 1 × next-day delivery · €38.00
GuiltFree detected a purchase. Declare 2×, revoke 1×, and this order is net zero. One click.
Questions
No. GuiltFree is satire. It offsets nothing, funds nothing, and issues certificates with no standing of any kind.
It reduces reported emissions, which is the metric that appears in the report.
Yes. Retroactive intent is fully supported. Simply declare that you had intended to do it twice.
Then you have emitted 2× and avoided nothing, and the certificate becomes misleading. Please do not do this. The protocol depends on your restraint at precisely the point where it stops being convenient.
The second one is exactly as real as the reduction it produces. This is the position taken by the wider sector and GuiltFree sees no reason to depart from it.
You do. Third-party verification was considered and found to be the origin of most of the difficulties described above.