Statement in response to CarbonPlan report
Written by Chris Meikle
Published
We welcome scrutiny of carbon market projects, and would like to thank CarbonPlan for engaging with our work through its Policy Brief. Now the report is published, we will take the time required to read and digest it.
The Integrity Council’s Core Carbon Principles establish an independent global standard for high-integrity carbon credits. Our rules require that carbon crediting methodologies that are CCP-Approved meet the requirements for additionality, as set out in our Assessment Framework and Assessment Procedure. Methodologies are the rules used to design and implement projects – the Integrity Council assesses the methodologies and the programs that develop the methodologies, not the individual projects.
ICVCM provides oversight at program and methodology level and ensures that programs are properly applying approved methodologies. We have an assurance and oversight process that enables us to start investigations including based on public information such as reports prepared on specific projects using approved methodologies.
Once we have approved a carbon-crediting program as CCP-Eligible, we oversee its use of the CCP label and assure that it is only applied to credits using CCP-Approved methodologies which ICVCM has assessed to be sufficiently robust. We are fully aware that it is possible for issues to arise at the project level. Our role is to supervise the CCP-labelled market to ensure CCP-Eligible programs abide by our governance rules to oversee the projects for which they are issuing CCP-labelled credits, and take action if there are any issues.
The specific role of the Integrity Council within oversight and assurance processes is set out in our Assessment Procedure: if we identify issues, we are able to investigate and engage with the relevant carbon crediting program to ensure that the CCP methodology is being implemented correctly, and we will do so if there are cases of mislabelling, for example.
We will do further analysis of the claims being made by CarbonPlan to determine next steps which will be made public.
Updated 4 July 2024.
