Voluntary Offset Standards & Protocols
To address concerns related to the quality of carbon offset projects and offset retailers, in recent years over a dozen voluntary offset standards have been developed to provide offset programs and projects with a means to assure quality to buyers. Standards in the carbon offset market have an especially high value because the market has many features and presents many concerns that are difficult for buyers to evaluate.
There are three core components of a carbon offset standard:
1. Accounting standards
Accounting standards ensure that offsets are “real, additional, and permanent”. These include definitions of and rules on the elements that are essential during the design and early implementation phase of a project. They can include additionality and baseline methodologies, definitions of accepted project types and methodologies, and methodologies for validating project activities. Unlike offset programs and standards, GHG accounting protocols do not define eligibility criteria or procedural requirements and have no associated regulatory bodies. However, they do form the basis for many offset standards and programs.
2. Monitoring, Verification and Certification Standards
Monitoring, Verification and Certification Standards ensure that offset projects perform as they were predicted to during the project design. Certification rules are used to quantify the actual carbon savings that can enter the market once the project is up and running.
3. Registration and Enforcement Systems
Registration and Enforcement Systems clarify ownership, enable trading in offsets and ensure that carbon offsets are only sold once. These must include a registry with publicly available information to uniquely identify offset projects and a system to transparently track ownership of offsets.
(Source: Testimony of Derik Broekhoff, Senior Associate, World Resources Institute, Before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, US House Of Representatives, July 18 2007.)
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Accounting Protocols:
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard 14064.
Voluntary Offset Standards:
Voluntary Carbon Standard 2007 (VCS 2007)
Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standards
Green-e Climate Protocol for Renewable Energy