ICVCM’s first round of approval: the beginning of a market shift

In assessing over 100 carbon credit methodologies across 36 project categories, on Thursday (06 June), the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) concluded evaluations of 7 methodologies belonging to ozone-depleting substances and landfill gas categories. These evaluations are guided by the ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles (CCP), which serve as a standardized benchmark for "high-quality" carbon credits in the market. Credits meeting the CCP are likely to be retired, in our view, thus altering the composition of the current supply pool as they will be taken out of circulation.

In this analysis, we focus on credits in circulation that have received the ICVCM’s “seal of approval.” We examine CCP-eligible credits from major registries: ACR (formerly American Carbon Registry), Climate Action Reserve (CAR), Gold Standard, and Verra, highlighting the relatively small fraction of such credits from each registry. Furthermore, an exploration of CCP-eligible credits reveals that credits generated in different years from the same project can vary in CCP-eligibility status, depending on the version of the methodology used.

This analysis builds upon our previous examination of credits in circulation in March, where we emphasized the influence of regulatory decisions and evolving methodologies in shaping what remains in the growing stockpile of non-retired credits.