U.S. Venture Open’s Sustainability Approach
The 2026 U.S. Venture Open will continue building sustainability into the event experience while delivering a first-class philanthropic event. Sustainability efforts include expanded waste and recycling management, use of high-quality voluntary carbon credits, and continued disclosure of the event’s estimated carbon footprint.
Through our partnership with WM, U.S. Venture will continue enhancing waste and recycling management across event locations. In 2026, this program will expand to Van Abel’s of Hollandtown, bringing waste and recycling services to all U.S. Venture Open event sites.
U.S. Venture will also retire high-quality voluntary carbon credits to address estimated greenhouse gas emissions from defined event activities and attendee travel. For the 2026 event, credits from U.S. Venture’s Mississippi River Islands Projects will be used.
Voluntary carbon credits are market-based instruments that can be purchased to support environmental projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To be a legitimate, high-quality credit, the carbon project must be “additional,” meaning that the project would not have occurred in the absence of carbon finance. The credits must have “permanence,” meaning that the carbon reduction or sequestration benefit should have no risk of reversal or use legally binding mitigation mechanisms. The carbon project should prevent “leakage” so that carbon-emitting activities discontinued in one location are not just shifted to another location. Finally, projects that can impact local communities or biodiversity need to have strong protection safeguards in place.
U.S. Venture and Carbon Credits
U.S. Venture’s tenured, in-house trading team was among the first to partake in CME Group’s carbon futures, which translates to experience and success in evaluating, purchasing, and retiring carbon credits. We are confident that when companies are looking to offset emissions, U.S. Venture can help given our extensive experience with developing and supplying high-quality credits from verified projects. Click here for more information on U.S. Venture’s sustainable products and services.
The improved forest management efforts of this project support the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
2026 U.S. Venture Open Carbon Credits
The 2026 U.S. Venture Open carbon credits utilized support U.S. Venture’s Mississippi River Islands Projects. This project came online in Summer 2024, bringing sustainable forest management to these islands. These credits meet CORSIA and CME Group’s Global Emissions Offset criteria. Additionally, carbon credits from projects located within the United States—where environmental regulations are stronger than many other countries—typically must reach a higher standard to achieve additionality. This project generates both avoidance and removal credits.
U.S. Venture will retire 240 avoidance carbon credits to offset a total estimated 220.40 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) generated from defined activities. To determine the amount of credits needed for the event, we use the prior year’s U.S. Venture Open data and apply assumptions about attendees and event activities. In future years, we plan to continue this practice to estimate the carbon footprint of specific activities and retire carbon credits accordingly. We appreciate information provided by event attendees during registration to assist us with this activity.
Disclosure of our carbon footprint calculation and assumptions used can be found in the table and table notes below.
2025 U.S. Venture Open Carbon Credits
The 2025 U.S. Venture Open continued to utilize carbon credits that support U.S. Venture’s Mississippi River Islands Projects.
U.S. Venture retired 210 avoidance carbon credits to offset a total estimated 191.73 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) generated from defined activities. To determine the amount of credits needed for the event, we use the prior year’s U.S. Venture Open data and apply assumptions about attendees and event activities.
2024 U.S. Venture Open Carbon Credits
For the 2024 U.S. Venture Open, the carbon credits utilized support U.S. Venture’s Mississippi River Island Projects.
U.S. Venture retired 190 removal carbon credits to offset a total estimated 170.64 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (C02e) generated from defined activities. To estimate the number of credits we needed to offset for the U.S. Venture Open, we used last year’s event data and created assumptions about attendees and the event activities.