Corporate climate action is more often than not approached as a branding or marketing exercise, whereas it needs to be about rethinking and redesigning business models. As the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor (CCRM) 2025 reveals, companies need to urgently scale up their awareness of and commitment to transformative change by rolling out a number of …
Read more “Race against the climate clock: Can corporations make good on their climate pledges in time?”
In new guidance, the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) is promoting the use of carbon credits to camouflage the fact that companies grappling with their indirect (scope 3) emissions are off track to reach their commitments. But carbon credits must not replace direct emissions reductions, NGOs warn.
The decision by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) to withhold its stamp of approval from the most problematic cookstove methodologies and to approve a good methodology is a welcome step in the right direction but more needs to be done.
Shell was the world’s largest user of carbon credits in 2024, a year in which fossil fuel companies dominated the voluntary carbon market. This allows them to pretend they are taking significant climate action, while continuing with business as usual. Since the ratification of the Paris Agreement, companies have shifted the way they consider and …
Read more “Behind the green curtain: big oil and the voluntary carbon market”
Carbon Market Watch filed this complaint with the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) to flag that Verra’s “review” of Human Rights Watch’s grievance related to Cambodia’s Southern Cardamom REDD+ project does not comply with the ICVCM Assessment Framework provisions on grievance mechanisms.
Over 80% of carbon credits issued by more than 2,000 projects have a much lower climate impact than they claim, a new meta study finds. This has serious implications for the role of carbon markets in combating the climate crisis. The peer-reviewed paper, whose lead author was Benedict Probst of the Max Planck Institute appeared …
Read more “Cooking the climate books: New peer-reviewed study finds carbon credit impact vastly overstated”
‘Questioning the integrity of the voluntary carbon market’ is a new series of Carbon Market Watch video explainers that answers your question on this neglected topic.
Many of the lofty announcements made at last year’s COP28 climate conference in Dubai have yet translate into action weeks ahead of COP29 in Baku.
The Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity initiative’s latest guidance on the use of carbon credits by companies undermines VCMI’s stated mission of combating greenwashing and setting out a framework for making valid climate claims. Last year, VCMI published its long anticipated Claims Code of Practice, which provides guidance for companies on how to use carbon credits …
Read more “VCMI’s new framework needlessly endangers its credibility”