New voluntary carbon initiative to focus on integrity

A new initiative has launched to boost confidence in the integrity of voluntary carbon credit markets, which proposes launching a new scheme focusing on the demand side and on claims to net zero made by companies.

"There is no widely agreed-upon definition of net zero at the corporate entity level," the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) said in its launch report.

There is "widespread confusion linked to the discrepancy in their calculation and communication" for corporate climate commitments, it said.

The VCMI will launch a categorisation scheme "for legitimate voluntary use of carbon credits and related claims to ensure that stakeholders can easily understand the climate impact of a company's actions", it said.

The VCMI said companies should not be able to make climate claims if they are using carbon credits to "offset" emissions that could have been avoided instead.

"It is no longer sufficient or legitimate to achieve long-term ‘equivalence' through counterbalancing emissions with carbon credits," it said.

"Integrity is the watchword. There is no room for greenwashing," said Alok Sharma, the UK president designate for the COP26 climate summit.

The VCMI will draw on work done by the Science Based Targets initiative to draw a climate claims framework that includes companies committing to reducing their value chain emissions at a specific rate and by a specific date, and with interim targets as part of a pathway to a final net zero goal. This prevents companies setting a far-off net zero commitment but making little actual change now. Residual emissions should be removed by 2050, or before for companies setting ambitious targets, it said.

The VCMI will consult until October and should launch its scheme in time for COP26 in November.

The VCMI is funded by the UK government and Children's Investment Fund Foundation, and the secretariat is run by the Meridian Institute, a US-based NGO.

By Eleanor Green