Following a recent Carbon Pulse article on the latest report from the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), John O’Brien of CMS has shared his perspective on why greater coordination across standards matters for trust and investment in carbon markets:
“I view it as a positive step in the right direction to achieve greater coordination across various standards and registries. I have always found it problematic that using different methodologies or standards for the same type of project can result in significantly different volumes of carbon credits.
For example, improved cookstoves that do not use ICVCM CCP-approved methodologies earn far more carbon credits (VERs) than those that do, particularly by using the approved fRNB (fraction of non renewable biomass) coefficients. This is of course wrong that the same project earns a different number of carbon credits depending on whether or not it has the ICVCM CCP label or not.
New Zealand should support efforts to achieve greater coordination across the market. Rather than developing our own methodologies or standards for the domestic voluntary carbon market, we should adopt international best practices. Buyers need to be educated that using ICVCM CCP-approved methodologies helps ensure higher levels of market integrity and is a positive step in the evolution of the voluntary carbon market in New Zealand.”
Read the Carbon Pulse article (behind a paywall)