The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) gave its stamp of approval to methodologies for both nature and technology-based carbon removals. The amount of credits generated by projects using such methodologies remains modest; however, adding them brings the total amount of CCP-labelled credits available to buyers to about 60 million.
Since the second quarter of 2024, the ICVCM has been systematically evaluating more than 100 methodologies across more than 30 project categories. This process is redefining which types of credits are viewed as legitimate by corporate buyers, traders, and regulators – see our last analysis about ICVCM’s verdict on afforestation/reforestation projects here.
In August, the ICVCM approved three biochar and two Improved Forest Management (IFM) methodologies under its Core Carbon Principles (CCP) label, with one additional IFM methodology from Climate Action Reserve (CAR) conditionally approved pending revisions. The biochar methodologies include CAR’s U.S. and Canada Biochar (v1.0), Isometric’s Biochar Production and Storage (v1.0), and Verra’s VM0044 Biochar Utilisation (v1.2), all of which are new and expected to issue credits from 2026. For IFM, Verra’s VM0045 and ACR’s Non-Federal U.S. Forestlands (v2.1) methodologies were approved, with projects under validation expected to issue hundreds of thousands of credits annually. CAR’s Mexico Forest Protocol (v3) received conditional approval, requiring revisions to leakage accounting and a 40-year minimum permanence commitment before credits can receive the CCP label.
Last week, the Integrity Council approved a new set of methodologies spanning both engineered and nature-based carbon removal methods of Gold Standard and Isometric. These include direct air capture, biomass and bio-oil geological storage, and concrete carbonation – technologies expected to issue over 3 million credits annually once projects scale. The ICVCM also granted full CCP approval to two nature-based methodologies: CAR Mexico Forest Protocol v3 for IFM, conditionally approved in August, following revisions to align leakage accounting with recent research, and VM0047 v1.1 for Afforestation, Reforestation and Revegetation (ARR), incorporating improved data tools and expanded eligibility – see Table 1.
While several new methodologies have been approved under the ICVCM framework, few have yet been translated into active issuance. No credits have been issued under the recently approved methodologies, including Isometric’s Biochar Production and Storage (v1), Gold Standard’s Carbon Sequestration Through Accelerated Carbonation of Concrete Aggregate (v1.0), CAR U.S. and Canada Biochar (v1.0), VM0045, and ACR Improved Forest Management (IFM) on Non-Federal U.S. Forestlands (v2.1). For ACR IFM, only older versions (v1.0-2.0) have issued credits, and these versions are still pending review by the Integrity Council.
In the biochar segment, momentum is building. However, real market volumes remain limited: three biochar projects registered under VM0044 in India collectively estimate around 250,000 tCO2 of annual emission reductions. Meanwhile, Isometric’s Biomass with Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS) and CAR Mexico Forest have yet to label their credits as CCP-eligible despite having received the stamp of approval to do so. Combined, these two methodologies contribute roughly 9.4 million credits to the potential CCP pool – Isometric’s BiCRS accounts for a mere 8,700 credits, an almost negligible addition to total circulation.
Overall, this brings us to around 61.5 million credits formally identified as CCP-eligible, representing just 5 percent of all credits currently in circulation – see Figure 1. The CCP-approved market remains highly concentrated, with four methodologies dominating total supply: AM0023 at 23 million credits (40%), CAR U.S. Adipic Acid Production at 12 million credits (20%), CAR Mexico Forest at 9 million credits (15%), and ACM0001 at 9 million credits (14%). Industrial gas and energy-sector methodologies, particularly nitrogen reduction projects, continue to dominate the CCP landscape, while nature-based projects are emerging but far from scale.
As Figure 2 shows, the vast majority of credits in circulation remain either ineligible for the CCP label or not yet assessed for it – see Figure 2. Currently, around 31 percent of all credits in circulation are considered non-CCP-eligible, linked to methodologies that have already been rejected by the Integrity Council. This segment, totaling roughly 325 million credits, is largely composed of legacy Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) ACM0002 for renewable energy projects. While these credits remain active in registries, their CCP rejection effectively places them in a lower-confidence tier of credits in circulation, pending potential methodological reform or revalidation if the project proponents decide to do so.
A further 30 percent of credits in circulation, about 287 million, remain under ICVCM review. This “pending” group is dominated by registries such as Cercarbono, which hold large volumes of land-use and industrial transition methodologies. Within this cohort, a few methodologies account for the bulk of the unclassified volume: CCB-M/LU-REDD+ (45.8 M), ACR Improved Forest Management v1-2 (28.9 M), ACR Transition to Advanced Foam Blowing Agents (37.2 M), and ACR Certified Reclaimed HFC Refrigerants (17.8 M).
Meanwhile, 16 percent of credits in circulation, around 195 million, have been explicitly excluded from CCP assessment altogether, mainly because the registries have opted not to submit them. This category is overwhelmingly dominated by Verra’s VCS methodologies, including VM0007 (56.8 M), VM0009 (56.3 M), VM0015 (25.6 M), and VMR0006 (31.5 M).
Finally, roughly 10 percent of the total market, about 117.6 million credits, remains “unrepresented” in the CCP process. These credits come from hundreds of smaller methodologies across CDM, ACR, CAR, and Gold Standard programs that have not been mapped to any CCP category.
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