Carbon Market Watch (CMW) welcomes the opportunity given by Verra to comment on the renewed Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) programme.
Verra – and the VCS in particular – has been scrutinised and criticised for the integrity of several projects and methodologies, and the role that its Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) are playing in corporate greenwashing at a global scale. This raises complicated questions around the future of the voluntary carbon market. As the leading market standard for carbon credits, Verra carries a large responsibility in improving its own integrity, and hence integrity of the market as a whole. Issuing low quality carbon credits that are used by companies to greenwash their high-carbon activities is counterproductive to Verra’s stated mission.