Standards Development

Scope

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (Integrity Council) is an independent governance body for the voluntary carbon market. Our purpose is to ensure the voluntary carbon market accelerates a just transition to 1.5 °C.

The Integrity Council’s role is to set and enforce a definitive global threshold standard for high-quality carbon credits. The purpose of the draft Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) and Assessment Framework is to provide a credible, rigorous, and readily accessible means of identifying high-quality carbon credits that create real, additional and verifiable climate impact with high environmental and social integrity. We will do this by establishing a definitive and consistent benchmark for high-integrity carbon credits, based on solid science and best practice; assessing crediting programs and credit types against that benchmark; and clearly identifying those that meet it.

The draft Assessment Procedure sets out a proposed process for assessing CCP‑eligibility, how eligible carbon credits will be tagged, and how the Integrity Council will continue to oversee and enforce the CCPs, and facilitate the continual development of the voluntary carbon market.

This document contains draft CCPs, Assessment Framework and Assessment Procedure for public consultation. These proposals build on existing best practice, infrastructure and efforts in the voluntary carbon market, and the work of the Taskforce for Scaling the Voluntary Carbon Markets.  The proposals do not represent an already-formed consensus view by the Integrity Council; the documents are intended to serve as a robust, independent starting point that will be further informed by the insights and dialogue gathered during the public consultation.

The proposed CCPs and Assessment Framework have been developed based on recommendations by our Expert Panel, supported by eleven subject matter experts. The Expert Panel works under the oversight of the Standards Oversight Committee, which is made up of members of the Integrity Council’s Governing Board. The proposals have also been developed in open dialogue with stakeholders from across the voluntary carbon market ecosystem.

The Integrity Council is running a full, open public consultation on the draft CCPs, Assessment Framework and Assessment Procedure outlined in this document.

Co-creation is the cornerstone of success. This consultation is designed to capture insight and knowledge from truly diverse and complementary points of view from stakeholders across the VCM value chain. We welcome and expect diversity of views and expertise, and invite everyone to share their knowledge, experiences and innovations so we can co-create the CCPs and Assessment Framework.

The consultation is open until 23:59pm BST on 27^th September 2022.

The proposals in these documents will be updated/revised in response to feedback from the public consultation. Respondents are asked to provide both generic and detailed comments and suggestions for improvements to these proposals. Respondents have the option to submit comments anonymously. The consultation is overseen by the British Standards Institution (BSI).

If you wish to leave a generic or cross-cutting comment, you can do so in any commenting box against any part of the text for which the option to submit a comment is available.

If you run out of space in one commenting box, simply raise another comment on the same text in another commenting box and continue there.

It is necessary to select comment type for the comment to be submitted.