A key oversight body set up to improve the quality of carbon credits has been called into question by members of its expert board, two of whom recently resigned in protest over its decision to endorse offset rules they say lack integrity.
Last month, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) gave its high-quality label to three methodologies for producing carbon offsets that aim to reduce deforestation under so-called REDD+ projects – the first to be approved for forest offsets.
The watchdog said at the time that the new forest carbon credit rules would “usher in a new generation of high-integrity projects” as they addressed concerns with previous REDD+ methodologies that came under fire for overstating their emissions-cutting benefits.
But carbon market experts Lambert Schneider and Juerg Fuessler have now come out publicly against the decision which they say sets a “problematic precedent” and calls into question the ICVCM’s assessment process. They both announced this week they had stepped down from the body’s expert panel which plays an advisory role in the ICVCM’s decision-making. Schneider formally left the post in September.
Divisions in ICVCM’s ‘big tent’
The ICVCM was set up to address widespread concerns over the quality of carbon credits and inject more credibility into the market. The watchdog assesses guidelines used to develop offsetting projects to determine whether they comply with the “Core Carbon Principles” (CCP) criteria, which are designed to identify and encourage high-integrity credits that meet requirements on governance, emissions reduction and sustainable development.
A spokesperson for the ICVCM told Climate Home that the body “purposefully built a ‘big tent’, seeking out diverse experience and expertise”. Members of civil society, academia and the corporate world – including the carbon offsetting industry – provide input into the ICVCM’s rulings on carbon credit methodologies.
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Its working group on REDD+ – which operates separately from the expert panel – included representatives from Amazon, forestry project developer Wildlife Works, carbon standards like Verra and ART, and non-profits like the World Resources Institute and the Environmental Defense Fund, among others.
The spokesperson said that having “all perspectives” included in the process “inevitably produces disagreements on specific issues and even on assessment decisions”, and described that as a “strength” rather than a weakness. But, they added, “overall the assessment process found that the methodologies have robust approaches in place to mitigate environmental risks”.
Integrity ‘at risk’
Schneider, a research coordinator for international climate policy at Germany’s Oeko-Institut, disagreed, telling Climate Home the approval of the REDD+ methodologies threatens the oversight body’s mission.
“In our assessment, the three methodologies do not comply with ICVCM’s criteria,” he said. “That presents a risk to the integrity of the initiative,” he added.
ICVCM greenlit two methodologies proposed by leading carbon standard Verra and one developed under the ART Trees programme.
In a joint online post, Schneider and Fuessler, along with two other experts involved with the ICVCM, wrote that although the new rulebooks for forest carbon projects offer improvements on previous versions, they still run the risk of generating low-integrity credits.
That, they argue, is because of the ways project developers are able to estimate how much deforestation would occur without the project, demonstrate that funding from carbon credits is needed (known as “additionality”), and counter the risk of carbon being released back into the atmosphere, for example as a result of wildfires.
“Given the large size of these activities, we fear that the current methodologies could lead to large volumes of credits not backed by any actual emission reductions,” the experts concluded.
Continued monitoring
The ICVCM spokesperson told Climate Home that some of the risks raised by the experts “were not likely to be material due to external factors such as global deforestation trends”, without elaborating further, while others would be effectively addressed through the approach used in the methodology.
The spokesperson also added that the ICVCM will monitor the implementation of the methodologies and remain “attentive to integrity risks in their application”.
No credits have been issued so far under the three approved methodologies for forest projects, but the body said that “there is a large volume of credits in the pipeline”.
Hundreds of millions of REDD+ offsets have been issued under older methodologies but have faced widespread criticism over their alleged lack of real emissions reductions and weakness in protecting environmental and human rights. The ICVCM did not assess the criteria for these earlier projects, and producers of those credits will not be able to claim the high-integrity CCP label unless they switch to the approved methodologies.
Tiered system?
Schneider said the ICVCM had set a “relatively ambitious” benchmark, but for now “the problem is that the number of high-quality credits that meet that level is quite low”.
He added that the body could have chosen a different approach if it wanted to “distinguish the grey from the black”, referring to projects that are judged to have varying degrees of integrity.
“You could do this by introducing a tiered system instead of just setting one bar,” Schneider said.
The ICVCM spokesperson said the body’s approval process for its high-quality offsets label “is built intentionally to get many perspectives, not to force people into consensus”. There are 26 members in its advisory groups, and four of them disagreed with the REDD+ conclusion, the spokesperson added.
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post Experts quit carbon market watchdog in row over quality label for forest credits appeared first on Climate Home News.
Experts quit carbon market watchdog in row over quality label for forest credits
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Amid reports that the government could weaken the UK’s electric vehicle (EV) targets, Carbon Brief analysis reveals the nation’s EV drivers are saving more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs, compared with running a petrol car.
Battery EVs (BEVs) are roughly four times more efficient than combustion-engine cars, making them far cheaper to run – particularly since the Iran crisis caused a spike in fossil-fuel prices.
The savings from driving BEVs are also more than three times higher than for “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs), which evidence shows are mostly driven with their combustion engines.
In total, the more than 2m BEVs, 1m PHEVs and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are saving drivers around £3bn a year, Carbon Brief’s analysis shows, as illustrated in the figure below.
In addition, these EVs are avoiding the need for nearly 2.5bn litres of fuel and cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 7m tonnes each year.
Despite recent news that EVs are now cheaper to buy than petrol cars, as well as having far lower running costs, BBC News says the government is “set to water down” its EV sales targets.
The broadcaster explains that the current goal, under the UK’s “zero-emissions vehicle” (ZEV) mandate, is for 80% of new car sales to be BEVs by 2030.
It says that the government is set to consult on weakening this to between 50% and 70%, following “lobbying” by carmakers and trade unions.
According to the Sunday Times, prime minister Keir Starmer “is understood to have overruled the energy secretary [Ed Miliband] after sustained pressure from industry, the Unite union and Peter Kyle, the business secretary”.
The car industry has consistently claimed there is insufficient demand for BEVs to meet the targets under the ZEV mandate, yet the government says manufacturers have “over-complied” to date. Independent analysts say the industry is on track to continue beating the ZEV mandate goals.
The industry has been able to beat its targets by using a wide range of “flexibilities”, which were introduced after a previous round of lobbying. These allow carmarkers to meet part of their EV targets by selling more efficient combustion cars, such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
The ZEV mandate is the single-largest part of the government’s plans to meet its legally binding climate goals over the next decade.
The advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC) previously warned that the extra flexibilities would result in a larger number of hybrids being sold, at the expense of battery EVs.
When it consulted on the ZEV mandate in 2023, the then-Conservative government noted that PHEVs do not deliver the cost and CO2 savings they are advertised with.
It pointed to “dramatic” differences between the performance of PHEVs in test cycles and what they deliver under real-world conditions.
In practice, less than a third of miles driven in PHEVs are fuelled by electricity, with petrol making up the rest. As a result, cost and CO2 savings from BEVs are three times larger than for PHEVs.
The post Analysis: UK’s EV drivers are now saving £1,100 each a year – and £3bn in total appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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Civil society groups have called for an investigation into the first carbon credits approved under a new UN mechanism, alleging the project is linked to Myanmar’s military junta – which the UN says is guilty of human rights abuses – and has “massively” overstated its climate impact.
The programme, which aims to cut emissions by distributing efficient cookstoves across Myanmar, received approval to issue around 650,000 carbon credits from the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body in February, in a landmark moment for the Paris Agreement’s carbon market. Only two projects have been given the green light by the mechanism’s regulator so far.
But two reports published last week, led by the Global Forest Coalition and Brussels-based NGO Carbon Market Watch, raised serious concerns about the project’s implementation in conflict zones where civilians have faced airstrikes and mass displacement as well as its emission-reduction calculations.
Project continued after military coup
Myanmar has been ravaged by a brutal civil war since the country’s military overthrew the democratically elected government in a coup d’état in February 2021. The military regime has attacked civilian populations, persecuted ethnic minorities and committed widespread sexual violence, among other serious human rights violations, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar said in April.
The cookstove programme started in 2018 under the previous UN-run carbon offsetting scheme – the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – as a partnership between Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) and the Climate Change Center (CCC), a South Korean NGO, with investment from private South Korean firms.
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The project continued operating after the coup. For most of the period between 2021 and 2022 in which the issued credits were generated, MONREC was led by Colonel Khin Maung Yi, who was sanctioned by the European Union in 2021 for supporting the military regime, the Global Forest Coalition report said.
CCC acknowledged engaging with government authorities after the coup but said this “should not be interpreted as political endorsement” of the junta. The South Korean NGO added that abandoning the programme when political circumstances changed “would not necessarily have been the most responsible outcome for the households involved”.
Conflict prevents on the ground verification
The Global Forest Coalition report raised particular concerns about the project’s implementation in Myanmar’s central Dry Zone, including Sagaing Region, an anti-junta resistance stronghold that has been most heavily affected by the conflict and routinely targeted by airstrikes and violent attacks. The region accounts for more than a third of Myanmar’s 3.8 million internally displaced people.
The NGOs said that, in addition to ethical concerns about carbon credits being produced by the military government in an area actively affected by its attacks, this raises questions over the ability to effectively verify the climate integrity of the projects.
Before carbon credits are issued, external auditors need to validate the claims made by project developers and confirm that the emission reductions claimed are correct. This process usually includes site visits to a representative sample of households to check how the improved cookstoves are being used.
But, because of the “volatile political situation” in Myanmar, the auditing team was not able to leave the capital Yangon and could only speak to project participants remotely via Zoom, project documents show.
“Due to ongoing armed conflict on the ground, the data currently used to justify carbon credit issuance in Sagaing by the Burmese military junta is unverifiable and highly likely fraudulent,” said Zaw Tuseng, founder and president of the Myanmar Policy Institute, which contributed to the report, in a written statement. “This demands an immediate suspension of credit transfers until a neutral, conflict-sensitive audit can be conducted.”
“Exceptional circumstances”
CCC told Climate Home News that, although it recognises that on-site verification is “generally preferable, particularly in complex operating environments”, the decision to opt for remote controls was not taken “as a discretionary shortcut, but as an approved alternative under exceptional circumstances”.
The South Korean NGO added that it reviewed the feasibility of the project at community level “on an ongoing basis” and it “did not identify conflict-related incidents that directly affected project implementation activities in participating communities during the monitoring period”.
A spokesperson for the UN climate change body told Climate Home News that, when site access is not possible, the UN carbon credit mechanism allows for “alternative verification approaches while still maintaining conservative assumptions and environmental integrity safeguards”. “These provisions ensure that crediting can only proceed where evidence is reliable,” they added.
Contested methodology
Carbon markets are seen as an important channel to raise money to help low-income communities in developing countries switch to less polluting cooking methods, both reducing CO2 emissions and improving air quality. But several cookstove offsetting projects have faced criticism from researchers and campaigners who argue that climate benefits are often exaggerated and weak monitoring can undermine claims of real emission reductions.
The project in Myanmar uses a contested methodology developed under the earlier Kyoto Protocol that was rejected last year by The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), a watchdog that issues quality labels to carbon credit types, because it found it “insufficiently rigorous”.
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After transitioning from the CDM to the new mechanism, the project was required to apply “more conservative” assumptions to calculate emission reductions, which resulted in 40% fewer credits being issued, according to the UN climate change body.
“The result is consistent with environmental integrity requirements and ensures that each credited tonne genuinely represents a tonne reduced and contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, which oversees the mechanism, said in February.
Too many credits issued
But Carbon Market Watch claimed in a second report last week that, despite the adjustment, the project is still likely to issue seven times more credits than its real climate impact justifies, comparing its calculations with values from peer-reviewed scientific literature.
The biggest driver of the credit inflation, the group said, is the failure to account for “stacking” – the widespread practice of households using multiple stoves at the same time, including more polluting ones the project does not monitor.
Peer-reviewed science considers a stacking rate of 68% a conservative assumption, but the methodology used by the Myanmar programme makes no allowance for it at all, the report said.
CCC disputed those findings. In a written response to Climate Home News, it said the project was developed under methodologies approved within the UN climate framework and that external recalculations by researchers are not “determinative of the level of crediting achieved”.
The credits are expected to be used primarily by major South Korean polluters to meet obligations under the country’s emissions trading system – a move that will also enable the government to count those units toward emissions reduction targets in its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the UN climate body told Climate Home News.
Myanmar will use the remaining credits to achieve in part the goals of its own national climate plan under the Paris Agreement.
“Over-crediting, at any magnitude, cannot be compatible with the climate ambition of a world striving to limit global warming to 1.5ºC,” said Isa Mulder, an expert at Carbon Market Watch.
The post UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns
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