Statement in response to announcement by C-Quest Capital

The announcement by C-Quest Capital of its former CEO’s wrongdoing which resulted in the over-issuance of millions of carbon credits, is deeply disappointing and speaks to the need for the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market and its Core Carbon Principles (CCPs).

There is no place in this market for fraud, corruption, or other wrongdoing. Integrity and trust are market imperatives and this alleged behaviour would undermine both.

A professional, well-supervised voluntary carbon market can play an important role in mobilising private finance at scale for climate solutions and channelling investment to the Global South, but this will only happen if there is confidence in the integrity of carbon-crediting projects.

We nonetheless recognise the efforts of the new leadership at C-Quest Capital to make public the alleged wrongdoing, submit information to the relevant authorities, and their commitment to try to address the impacts on the market of their over-crediting of cookstove projects.

At this time, we have no information to indicate that any carbon-crediting program approved by the Integrity Council is implicated in the alleged wrongdoing at C-Quest Capital.

The Integrity Council’s oversight function includes the power to investigate how carbon-crediting programs address specific projects where problems have come to light. We can investigate on our own, or we can seek information from the relevant carbon-crediting program on how it is handling the matter. The carbon-crediting program has an obligation under sections 5.8 and 5.9 of our Assessment Procedure to respond to and support any such investigation. We will now be investigating this matter. We note that Verra has suspended 27 C-Quest Capital projects until its independent review is complete.

The Integrity Council is currently assessing the methodology used by C-Quest Capital (VMR0006). The assessment process takes into account public information, including technical information on how methodologies are applied and other information that is pertinent to assessing robustness, and we will review the latest information from C-Quest Capital.