goes to the company that takes on the risk that the project may fail. The project's investors take 19p, with smaller amounts of money being distributed between organisations involved in brokering and auditing the carbon credits. In that respect carbon offsets are similar to most consumer products, with only a fraction of sale prices going to the off-shore producers, the rest being shared between investors and distributors who bring it to the markets, who themselves need to pay their employees and service providers such as advertising agencies most of the time located in expensive areas. Project Effectiveness Lack of regulation and enforcement Several certification standards exist, offering variations for measuring emissions baseline, reductions, additionality, and other key criteria. However, no single standard governs the industry, and some offset providers have been criticized on the grounds that carbon reduction claims are exaggerated or misleading. For example, an investigation by ProPublica and MIT Technology Review found that the carbon credits issued by the California Air Resources Board used a formula that calculated the amount of timber that could be logged from a given parcel of land, given typical exploitation patterns, rather than the amount that likely would be logged. This led to carbon credits being issued to conservation organizations like Massachusetts Audubon Society in return for not logging forests they presumably had no intention of cutting down. This resulted in the emissions of California polluters Phillips 66, Shell Oil Company, and Southern California Gas Company not being offset by forest sequestration. Point Carbon has reported on an inconsistent approach with regard to some hydro-electric projects as carbon offsets; some countries in the EU are not allowing large projects into the EU ETS, because of their environmental impacts, even though they have been individually approved by the UNFCCC and World Commission on Dams. Issues with tree-planting for carbon offsetting One of the most popular types of projects to produce carbon offsets is reforestation or tree planting. However, some environmentalist organizations have questioned the effectiveness of tree-planting projects for carbon offset purposes. Critics point to the following issues with tree planting projects: Timing. Trees reach maturity over a course of many decades. Project developers and offset retailers typically pay for the project and sell the promised reductions up-front, a practice known as "forward selling". Permanence. It is difficult to guarantee the permanence of the forests, which may be susceptible to clearing, burning, or mismanagement.