(Makes clear reserve is for all U.S. projects, not only those in California, paragraph 2)

By Bernie Woodall

LOS ANGELES, April 14 (Reuters) - The Climate Action Reserve, officially launched on Monday, seeks to provide more certainty, clarity and transparency to a sometimes opaque voluntary carbon reduction market in the United States.

The Climate Action Reserve offers a seal of approval for legitimate carbon reduction projects throughout the United States, said Gary Gero, president of the California Climate Registry.

The Climate Action Reserve is a division of the nonprofit California Climate Action Registry, and is expected to be financed by registration and other fees to the public and private entities that use its services.

"The (Climate Action) Reserve is a very important step in the United States. It puts together real, qualified standards for those projects even though (the reserve) is very small now," said Marc Stuart, California-based founder of what has become Britain-based EcoSecurities Group Plc (ECO.L: Quote, Profile, Research), one of the world's biggest developers of carbon offsets.

The reserve now has only two projects it has verified -- both forest projects that are partially funded through purchased carbon offsets.

Gero said the reserve expects to have 20 or so projects that meet its standards within a year; 50 to 100 new ones in its second year; and hundreds of new projects representing millions of tons of carbon reduction tons, or CRTs, in its third year of existence.

"At this juncture, it's buyer beware," said Stuart. "Clearly, what the reserve is doing is by far the most credible thing we've seen in the United States," Stuart said.