Ensuring that future policy is informed by comprehensive understanding of existing best practice and programs is central to the Integrity Council’s work.
Continuous Improvement Work Programs (CIWPs) in this thematic area address matters of core importance for the market where a “whole of market approach” offers new opportunities for innovation and improvement.
Together, these programs are setting new standards for a more robust, transparent, and effective carbon market.
Standardised Approaches Working Groups
Permanence
Permanence addresses a fundamental aspect of carbon crediting: ensuring that the carbon reductions achieved are sustained over time periods that are meaningful for addressing climate change.
It’s vital we continue to develop new approaches to monitoring and compensation periods, that mitigate the risk of reversed carbon savings, whether due to climate change impacts, economic pressures, or other factors. This work program is exploring a range of issues related to the topic of permanence and durability, including:
- Buffer pool stress testing
- Standardised approaches to risk assessment and management
- Innovative reversal risk management approaches, including pooled funds and buffer reserve pools.
By focusing on enhancing the long-term stability of carbon storage, this CIWP plays a vital role in continuing to build long-term systems that deliver meaningful impacts on climate change, allocate and intermediate risk appropriately and explore new and innovative approaches to reversal risk management and compensation.
Permanence Report (May 2025)
The CIWP on Permanence found that there is a strong foundation of approaches for addressing permanence that have been implemented across the market to date, but that those approaches are not standardised or harmonised.
Standard definitions
In future refinements to the Assessment Framework, the ICVCM should include a standard definition of what is classified as an avoidable reversal and what is classified as an unavoidable reversal.
Compensation liability equivalents
In future refinements to the Assessment Framework, the ICVCM should clarify that cessation of monitoring and verification should result in a compensation liability equivalent to the amount of credits that a project previously contributed to a pooled buffer reserve.
Stress testing for pooled buffer reserves
The ICVCM should pilot stress testing for pooled buffer reserves, and based on the results of the pilot, consider whether and how to incorporate mandatory stress testing into the Assessment Framework.
Guidance on risks and acceptable data
The ICVCM should provide guidance on the types of risks addressed and acceptable data sources used in project-level risk assessments conducted by carbon crediting programs.
Options for extending monitoring and compensation periods
The ICVCM should explore options for extending the 40-year monitoring and compensation period tied to the beginning of the project crediting period in a way that distributes liability amongst other market participants and allows for the use of novel compensation mechanisms.
Innovation sandbox
The ICVCM should explore the creation of an innovation sandbox that could be used to pilot new, innovative changes to the CCP-Approved methodologies while retaining the CCP-Approval.
Read the report:
These recommendations will be further expanded in the second part of the Permanence CIWP (Monitoring and Compensation), which is planned to begin in 2025.
Permanence: Monitoring and Compensation
Ensuring that carbon credits deliver durable, long‑term climate impact is essential for market integrity. Building on earlier work on permanence, this Continuous Improvement Work Program explores practical solutions to improve how the market monitors, manages, and compensates for reversal risk across all project types and contexts.
This work program will explore opportunities to:
- Strengthen and stress‑test pooled buffer reserves to ensure they are sufficiently robust over time.
- Develop standardised definitions and guidance on project‑level risk assessment that promote consistency and comparability across the market.
- Evaluate and advance innovative compensation mechanisms – such as industry‑wide pooled buffer reserves, insurance models, and other novel tools – to respond effectively to reversals if they occur.
This work aims to promote consistent, high-integrity approaches that support carbon credit durability and build confidence among market actors, buyers, and stakeholders.
Applications for this working group are under review. Applicants can expect to hear back in Q2 2026.
Simplified Approaches for Small Projects
Simplified Approaches for Small Projects spearheads inclusivity in the voluntary carbon market by tailoring processes to empower small-scale projects and bring down barriers and costs to enter and participate in the VCM.
By reducing complexities and barriers, this can ensure that innovative, local projects can access the financial support they need to thrive and contribute to global sustainability goals.
Jurisdictional Crediting Approaches
The ‘Jurisdictional Crediting Approaches’ CIWP is focused on defining the best ways to credit and account for carbon reduction efforts on a larger scale. Jurisdictional Crediting Approaches play an important role in aligning carbon market initiatives with regional and national climate strategies, enhancing both integrity and impact.
By ensuring that carbon credits align with high-level governmental goals, it reduces risks like double counting and improves transparency, making the market more trustworthy and scalable.
This strategic alignment also invites larger-scale emission reductions and attracts more participants, driving significant environmental progress and market growth.
Renewable Energy Crediting Approaches
The CIWP on Renewable Energy Crediting Approaches will explore existing and emerging approaches to demonstrating additionality in renewable energy methodologies, with the aim of strengthening future crediting methodologies in this sector.
Carbon market experts have raised concerns about the difficulty of demonstrating the additionality of renewable energy activities under existing methodologies. In 2019, the question of whether some renewable energy activities had matured beyond the point of requiring carbon financing even led two major carbon crediting programs to revise their eligibility criteria.
The Integrity Council’s Governing Board agreed that while the renewable energy sector is vital to delivering energy access worldwide, existing methodologies in this area are not sufficiently robust in demonstrating additionality. The Board also considered that it is important to improve best practice in demonstrating additionality, and that a CIWP might be helpful to achieve this.
Transition Credits
Phasing out fossil fuels is crucial to meeting global climate goals. However, it remains a significant challenge, particularly in emerging and developing economies where coal makes up a large portion of the energy mix.
Transition credits are emerging as a tool to accelerate this transition, by mobilising private finance to support the early retirement of fossil-fuel power plants and their replacement with cleaner energy sources. However, the novelty and complexity of transition crediting approaches raise important questions around credit integrity, social impacts and policy alignment.
The CIWP on Transition Credits examined how to define and assess high integrity in transition crediting approaches, including methodological integrity and just transition considerations.
Report from the CIWP on Transition Credits (April 2026)
The report from the CIWP on Transition Credits provides an initial assessment of the key elements that make up high integrity in transition crediting approaches. It sets out recommendations for where targeted guidance and requirements within the CCP Assessment Framework may be helpful in enabling robust category-specific assessment of these methodologies.
Transition credits represent a credible category of carbon credits, but may benefit from targeted guidance to ensure high integrity.
The working group found that while transition credits do not constitute a new asset type, their unique characteristics mean that tailored definitions, requirements and guidance can be beneficial in ensuring environmental and social integrity.
A robust and operational definition of ‘just transition’ is essential.
The group emphasised that just transition is a core integrity requirement for transition crediting approaches. It recommended that the Integrity Council develop a broad, whole-system definition of just transition and undertake a review of its safeguards framework with an eye to how it applies to transition crediting approaches.
Methodological clarity is needed across key integrity risks.
The report highlights the need for clear guidance on renewable energy pairing, additionality, leakage management and interactions between project-based and jurisdictional approaches.
Policy alignment and assurance will be critical as transition crediting approaches evolve.
The work program identified the importance of host-country policy consistency, including pledges not to build new fossil-fuel power plants, and the need to ensure that validation and verification bodies have the competencies required to appropriately validate and verify transition crediting approaches.
What happens next?
The recommendations of the CIWP on Transition Credits will inform future development of the CCP Assessment Framework as it applies to transition crediting approaches. They do not constitute an endorsement of any specific transition crediting methodology and have no immediate relevance to ongoing assessments.
Read the report:
These recommendations will be further expanded in the second part of the Permanence CIWP (Monitoring and Compensation), which is planned to begin in 2025.
Other CIWP areas
Regulatory & Policy Alignment
CIWPs Supporting Alignment Between the Voluntary Carbon Market and Evolving Climate Policy
Equity, Impact and Safeguards
CIWPs Advancing Equity, Safeguards, and Inclusive Benefits in the Carbon Crediting
Market Modernisation, Transparency, and Oversight
CIWPs Driving Digital Innovation, Transparency, and Trust in the Voluntary Carbon Market
