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The global carbon market received a strong signal after the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Technical Advisory Board approved carbon credits under Verra’s VM0051 methodology for use in the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation.

This decision brings rice methane reduction projects into a major aviation compliance market. It also opens a new demand channel for agricultural carbon credits, especially for airlines seeking eligible offsets.

The move shows growing recognition that agricultural methane cuts can play a bigger role in global climate goals. It also strengthens the position of rice projects, which have long faced challenges in carbon finance.

VM0051, launched in early 2025, supports improved water and crop management in rice farming. It helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions while improving water use, farm efficiency, and farmer benefits.

With CORSIA eligibility now confirmed, rice carbon credits may emerge as a stronger and more mainstream carbon market asset.

Rice Farming Moves Closer to Mainstream Carbon Markets

Rice production has long carried a large climate footprint. Flooded rice fields release methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.

Most of these emissions come from Asia, where rice remains central to food systems and rural economies. At the same time, rising food demand could push emissions even higher in the coming decades.

rice

VM0051 Brings Scalable Rice Methane Solutions

This created a clear need for scalable solutions, yet carbon finance in rice remained limited for years. But VM0051 aims to change this.

The methodology allows project developers to reduce emissions through improved water and crop management. Farmers can adopt practices such as alternate wetting and drying, better nitrogen management, shorter cultivation cycles, and lower-emission rice varieties. Some projects may also use innovative approaches, such as methanotrophic bacteria or avoiding residue burning.

These measures cut methane emissions while improving resource efficiency.

CORSIA Expands Demand for Rice Credits

CORSIA eligibility gives these credits a potential compliance buyer base, which changes the commercial outlook significantly. Airlines can use eligible credits to help meet offsetting obligations, provided projects also secure required host country authorization.

This link between aviation and agricultural methane reduction could help move rice carbon projects from a niche activity into a larger market segment.

Inside the New Framework of VM0051 

The approval also draws attention to how much the methodology has evolved.

Verra designed VM0051 to replace an older Clean Development Mechanism methodology that was retired in 2023. The newer framework includes stronger safeguards, broader project options, and more rigorous emissions accounting.

  • Additionality requirements have been strengthened to show projects go beyond normal farming practices.
  • Dynamic baselines help reflect changing weather conditions. The methodology also requires monitoring of methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide emissions linked to project activities. This broader accounting matters because carbon markets are placing greater weight on integrity.
  • Flexible quantification approaches, including biogeochemical models, give developers more options for emissions measurement. Digital MRV tools, including remote sensing and machine learning, can also help improve monitoring and verification.

These features make the methodology more aligned with what today’s market increasingly expects.

  • Importantly, VM0051 does more than support methane reduction. It recognizes a broader set of practices, including improved fertilizer management, biochar use, reduced biomass burning, and efficient fossil fuel use in operations.
  • Furthermore, projects must also protect against soil organic carbon losses, an important safeguard in agricultural systems. This wider scope can help developers design stronger projects while improving potential emission reductions.

Credit quality remains central to buyer confidence. In a market shaped by growing scrutiny, methodologies with stronger science and stronger controls tend to attract more attention.

Airlines Could Unlock New Demand for Rice Carbon Credits

The biggest market impact may come from demand. CORSIA eligibility often changes the value proposition of a carbon credit. Access to compliance demand can support liquidity, improve price support, and increase buyer interest.

This is where rice credits may benefit, and countries in South and Southeast Asia could become central to this growth story.

The Verra Registry currently includes eight projects using VM0051, with an estimated annual issuance of more than 1.73 million carbon credits. It remains a relatively small supply base compared with larger project categories in the carbon market.

If airlines begin sourcing these credits, developers may have stronger incentives to expand project pipelines, particularly across major rice-growing economies.

Rice Credits Offer More Than Compliance Value

  • The appeal goes beyond compliance demand alone. Many buyers increasingly seek credits linked to broader sustainability outcomes. Rice methane projects can offer multiple benefits alongside emissions reductions, including improved water management, lower pollution, and stronger farmer livelihoods.
  • Some projects may also support women’s access to training and financial services, adding social value that could strengthen buyer interest.
  • These features may help position rice credits not only as compliance instruments but also as attractive assets in the wider voluntary carbon market.

Market participants will also watch whether CORSIA eligibility supports stronger pricing for these credits.

Historically, compliance-linked credits often receive more market attention than credits limited to voluntary demand. If this pattern holds, VM0051 credits could see stronger commercial interest going forward.

carbon credits

Methane Reduction Gains a Larger Role in Carbon Markets

The approval also fits a larger trend in climate markets. Methane has moved closer to the center of climate strategy. Policymakers, investors, and corporate buyers increasingly view methane reduction as one of the fastest ways to slow warming in the near term.

Thus, this shift has raised interest in projects focused on methane abatement.

Much of this attention has centered on oil and gas, waste, and livestock. Rice cultivation now gains importance because agriculture has often lagged behind other sectors in the carbon market scale.

Forestry, renewable energy, and engineered carbon removal have captured much of the attention. Agricultural methodologies have often faced challenges tied to measurement, fragmentation, and project implementation. And VM0051 significantly addresses some of these barriers through stronger science and digital tools.

The ICAO decision, furthermore, may help reinforce confidence that agriculture can supply credible credits on a larger scale. It may also encourage greater innovation in agricultural carbon methodologies beyond rice.

Developers, registries, and policymakers will likely watch closely to see whether this model expands into broader methane-focused opportunities.

A Turning Point for Rice-Based Carbon Finance

For years, rice carbon credits had strong potential but weak market momentum. Projects faced technical hurdles, limited buyer familiarity, and funding constraints. This approval shifts that outlook.

By adding VM0051 credits to the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation under the ICAO, a clearer link is created between compliance demand and agricultural methane cuts.

This could accelerate project growth, investment, and adoption of improved rice practices, while pushing agricultural credits closer to mainstream carbon markets.

Future expansion depends on supply, demand, and approvals, but the signal is clear: rice methane credits are entering a larger market phase.

The post Verra’s VM0051 Gains CORSIA Eligibility, Boosting Rice Carbon Credit Demand appeared first on Carbon Credits.

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MRV and Additionality: The Two Questions Your Auditor Will Ask First

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13 hours ago

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September 16, 2026

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What auditors actually test, where projects actually fail, and the contract clauses that protect you before signature.

The meeting happens about fourteen months after the contract was signed. Your assurance provider has reached the nature-based investment line in your Scope 3 file, and the partner across the table has exactly two questions. How do you know the reductions happened? And how do you know they would not have happened anyway?

The first question is MRV: measurement, reporting, and verification. The second is additionality. Between them, they decide whether your nature-based investment counts, in your inventory, in your disclosure, and in front of your board. Everything else in the project documentation is supporting material for these two answers.

This article walks through what each question actually tests, where projects most commonly fail, what digital MRV has changed (and what it has not), and the contract clauses that protect you. The goal is to give you the diligence framework before you sign, because after the credit issues is the wrong time to discover the answers were weak.

What MRV actually verifies

MRV is the machinery that turns a field intervention into a defensible number. Measurement covers the data: biomass surveys, soil sampling, remote sensing, activity records from participating farms. Reporting covers the translation of that data into claimed reductions under a recognised methodology. Verification covers the independent check: an accredited third party tests the reporting against the methodology and the evidence.

The methodologies live in registries. Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard and the Gold Standard are the two largest for nature-based projects, and each publishes the methodology documents, monitoring requirements, and verification protocols that a project must follow. The ICVCM Assessment Framework now sits above the registries, assessing whole methodologies against the Core Carbon Principles and granting the CCP label to those that pass.

For a buyer, the practical questions are concrete. What is the monitoring frequency, and is it specified in the project design document or left vague? Who is the verifier, how were they selected, and how often do they rotate? What raw data do you, the buyer, get access to, and in what format? A project that answers these in writing is a different procurement than one that answers them in a sales call.

What additionality actually proves

Additionality asks whether the intervention caused the reduction, or whether the reduction would have happened anyway. The test is a counterfactual: what would this landscape, this farm, this forest have done without the project’s money?

Three forms matter in practice. Financial additionality asks whether the project needed the carbon revenue to proceed. Regulatory additionality asks whether the activity was already required by law. Common-practice additionality asks whether the activity is already standard in the region, in which case paying for it buys you nothing the world was not getting for free.

The reason additionality dominates audit conversations is recent history. Research published in 2023, including the Science paper examined at length in our piece on conventional offsets and boardroom credibility, found that a large share of REDD+ credits failed the counterfactual test because baselines were inflated. The market response was a wave of methodology revisions at Verra and the arrival of independent ratings agencies whose entire business is re-testing additionality claims. The Carbon Credit Quality Initiative publishes transparent scoring of methodologies on exactly this dimension, and it is free to consult before you sign anything.

Where projects most commonly fail the test

Five failure modes account for most of the wreckage.

  • Inflated baselines. The counterfactual assumes more deforestation, more degradation, or lower yields than the evidence supports. The claimed reduction is the gap between reality and the baseline, so an inflated baseline manufactures reductions from nothing.
  • Unaccounted leakage. The project protects one forest and the logging moves to the next valley. The methodology is supposed to net this out; weak projects estimate it optimistically.
  • Thin permanence protection. Nature-based carbon can reverse: fire, pest, drought, or a change of landowner. Buffer pools and insurance mechanisms exist for this, but their adequacy varies enormously between projects.
  • Attribution and double counting. In supply chain settings, the same reduction can be claimed by the supplier, the buyer, and a credit purchaser unless contracts prevent it. Our Insetting vs Offsetting piece covers the inventory rules; the point here is that the auditor will ask who else is counting this tonne.
  • Stale monitoring. Data collected at validation and never refreshed. The IPCC AR6 Working Group III land-sector chapter documents how quickly carbon stocks respond to disturbance; a three-year-old measurement is a historical artifact, not a current claim.

What digital MRV changes, and what it does not

Digital MRV is the genuine improvement in the field. Satellite remote sensing, including the free archives at NASA Earthdata, allows biomass and land-cover change to be monitored continuously rather than at multi-year verification intervals. Soil carbon models calibrated with physical sampling reduce the cost of agricultural measurement. The practical effect is more frequent data at lower cost, which compresses the window in which a problem can hide.

What digital MRV does not change is judgment. Baselines are still human decisions about counterfactuals. Additionality is still an argument, not a measurement. Research groups such as the Oxford Smith School have been clear on this point: better sensors improve the M in MRV, but the integrity questions live in the assumptions, and assumptions need governance, not gadgets.

For a buyer, the test is simple. Ask the provider what is measured by instrument, what is estimated by model, and what is assumed by methodology. A provider who can answer that question crisply understands their own evidence chain. A provider who cannot is selling you their confidence rather than their data.

What to require in your contract

The diligence above converts into five contract clauses.

  • Monitoring cadence and buyer data access, specified by dataset and frequency.
  • Verifier independence, named accreditation, and rotation terms.
  • Baseline revision triggers, so the counterfactual updates when the methodology or the evidence changes.
  • Reversal liability and buffer adequacy, with the mechanism named and sized.
  • Documentation handover in audit-ready form, so the evidence file your assurance provider needs already exists.

None of these clauses is exotic. All of them are absent from weak contracts, and their absence is the most reliable early signal that the MRV and additionality answers will be weak too.

If you are evaluating a nature-based investment and want the MRV and additionality stress-tested before signature rather than after, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can run that review against any project on your shortlist, and design nature-based supply chain investments where the evidence chain is built audit-first. Schedule a consultation.

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The EU’s New Green Claims Rules and Carbon Credits

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1 day ago

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September 15, 2026

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EU Directive: Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (ECGT)

The EU Directive, Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (ECGT), takes effect on September 27, 2026.(1) The goal of ECGT is to protect consumers by ensuring that environmental claims are fair, understandable, and reliable. This regulation does create a new compliance requirement for businesses, but it also provides sustainability and marketing teams with important guidance that helps create consistency in sustainability communications.

Key takeaways

  • ECGT takes effect September 27, 2026, and prohibits claims that a product or service has a neutral, reduced, or positive environmental impact based on offsetting alone.
  • Named example phrases the regulation prohibits include climate neutral, CO2 neutral certified, carbon positive, climate net zero, climate compensated, reduced climate impact, and limited CO2 footprint.
  • ECGT does not want to deter investment in carbon credits. It wants companies to communicate the real benefits of the projects they support instead.
  • SBTi’s guidance recommends framing carbon credits as taking responsibility for ongoing emissions, not as making a product or company neutral.
  • Voluntary carbon projects deliver real climate progress: reducing super-pollutants, protecting and restoring ecosystems, and supporting communities.

Regarding carbon credits specifically, voluntary carbon projects deliver important climate progress and environmental benefits that provide many talking points for companies. They reduce climate super-pollutants by removing industrial emissions like methane, N2O, HFCs and others. They protect and restore valuable ecosystems and carbon sinks like forests, mangroves and grasslands. They help communities by reducing local pollution, creating employment opportunities, improving access to healthcare, and more.

The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), a global leader in business climate action, concludes that alongside aggressive decarbonization, we should also use high quality carbon credits to take responsibility for our ongoing emissions. SBTi recognizes that carbon credits are important “to help limit temperature overshoot, mitigate transition risks, and support climate solutions.”(2)

ECGT language on carbon offsetting says that they do not want to deter investment in carbon credits. They just want companies to focus on communicating the benefits of the projects they support and avoid claims beyond the scope of carbon credits, which is good for everyone, companies and consumers alike.

The regulation reinforces that carbon credits do not change the sustainability of your products, so carbon credit buyers should not suggest that their products are more sustainable because of carbon credits. Instead, companies need to promote their climate contributions as a way to compensate or take responsibility for their carbon emissions by supporting projects that do great things like reducing global carbon emissions, reducing pollution, preventing deforestation, restoring forests, and more.

ECGT language related to carbon offsetting

The regulation is particularly focused on prohibiting claims, based on offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, that a product or service has a neutral, reduced, or positive impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. These claims are prohibited in all circumstances because they mislead consumers into believing the claim relates to the product itself, or to how it was made and supplied, or into thinking that using the product carries no environmental impact at all.

Named examples of prohibited claims include:

  • climate neutral
  • CO2 neutral certified
  • carbon positive
  • climate net zero
  • climate compensated
  • reduced climate impact
  • limited CO2 footprint

These claims are only allowed when they rest on a product’s actual lifecycle impact, not on offsetting emissions outside that product’s value chain, since the two are not equivalent. This prohibition does not stop companies from advertising their investments in environmental initiatives, including carbon credit projects, as long as they present that information in a way that is not misleading and that meets the other requirements of Union law.(1)

SBTi also provides guidance on climate contribution language in its Corporate Net Zero Standard Version 2.0 Draft for Second Public Consultation, November 2025. While the SBTi language is fairly technical, it has a good framework for crafting a climate contribution message.

SBTi Language for Carbon Credits(3)

  • Take responsibility for ongoing emissions by delivering mitigation impact contributions
  • Carbon credits certify the mitigation outcomes of projects that reduce, avoid, or remove carbon emissions
  • Activities that reduce emissions from emission sources not located within the company’s value chain
  • Activities that conserve, protect, and enhance natural carbon sinks
  • Activities that capture and store carbon in storage pools

SBTi’s draft standard also walks through sample claim language for this kind of contribution. In general, the samples move from a simple percentage statement, to naming a specific verified tonnage tied to that percentage, to a fuller statement that breaks the tonnage into reductions versus removals. Across all three, the framing stays consistent: a company took responsibility for a defined share of its ongoing emissions over a set period, by funding a specific, verified amount of mitigation, achieved through emission reductions or removals.(3)

FAQ: ECGT and Carbon Credit Claims

When does the ECGT directive take effect?

The rules apply across the EU from September 27, 2026, after member states transposed the directive into national law by March 27, 2026.

Does ECGT ban carbon offsetting?

No. It bans specific marketing claims that a product or service is environmentally neutral, reduced impact, or positive based on offsetting. Advertising investment in carbon credit projects themselves is still allowed if it is not misleading.

What phrases does ECGT specifically prohibit?

Named examples include climate neutral, CO2 neutral certified, carbon positive, climate net zero, climate compensated, reduced climate impact, and limited CO2 footprint, when those claims are based on offsetting rather than a product’s actual lifecycle impact.

How should a company describe its carbon credit purchases instead?

SBTi’s guidance recommends stating the specific verified tonnage of emissions reductions or removals funded and describing that as taking responsibility for a defined share of ongoing emissions, rather than claiming the company or product is neutral.

Does this rule apply to company level sustainability claims too?

ECGT is focused on claims about specific products and services in consumer marketing. Broader company level sustainability communication is a separate matter still governed by other existing rules.

While ECGT does add a new compliance burden for businesses, it helps create consistency in sustainability messaging that is important to building confidence in voluntary carbon projects and scaling the industry to help us achieve progress on global carbon emissions.

Disclaimer: Terrapass does not provide legal or regulatory advice. Any interpretation of regulation must be approved by your legal representative.

References:
(1) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/825/oj
(2) https://files.sciencebasedtargets.org/production/files/Corporate-Net-Zero-Standard-version-2.pdf
(3) https://files.sciencebasedtargets.org/production/files/CNZS-V2-Second-Consultation-Draft.pdf

The post The EU’s New Green Claims Rules and Carbon Credits appeared first on Terrapass.

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Carbon Footprint

Want a simpler way to buy carbon credits? Discover our carbon marketplace

Published

2 weeks ago

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September 2, 2026

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Want a simpler way to buy carbon credits? Discover our carbon marketplace

Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.

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