Strategies to Avoid Lower-Quality Carbon Credits

Vetting carbon crediting projects directly

Buyers can ask basic questions about crediting projects that may help screen out lower-quality options. In most cases, project developers and carbon credit owners should be forthcoming with answers to such questions (if they are not, it is a red flag). The level of effort required to investigate a crediting project can vary, depending on a buyer’s resources and the type of project involved. One option is to engage the services of consultants or trusted retailers to examine projects. It is often a good idea to work with someone who has a detailed understanding of the sectors or project types being considered, which in some cases could involve enlisting multiple experts.

Pros: For buyers with time, resources, and expertise, vetting crediting projects can provide deep and direct insight into their merits and relative quality. As with using carbon credit rating services, this approach can help to avoid lower-quality projects, and to discover individual higher-quality projects within “higher risk” categories. It may be the only way to discover such projects if they have not been rated by a rating service.

Cons: Vetting projects directly requires time, expertise, and resources, and may be infeasible for many buyers. It may also be an inefficient way to discover higher-quality credits for buyers interested primarily in “common” project types already assessed by rating services.

For more sophisticated buyers with the resources to perform this due diligence, we offer guidance to conduct crediting project “due diligence” for each quality criteria (follow the corresponding links below). There is also a sample case study provided.

Additionality

Quantification

Permanence

Ownership of avoided emission or enhanced removals

Co-benefits / harms

Due diligence sample case