As more organizations explore the use of voluntary carbon markets to meet their climate commitments, WSP’s Sustainability, Energy and Climate Change (SECC) team is collaborating to help them achieve those goals.
The SECC team helps its clients evaluate and source renewable energy certificates, carbon credits and carbon removals. But the practice also supports clients with advisory and strategy around all aspects of the voluntary carbon markets, including self-regulation initiatives like the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), an international nonprofit focused on credible, net zero-aligned participation in voluntary carbon markets.
Recently, VCMI released its Claims Code of Practice (CoP), which addresses voluntary carbon market integrity on the demand side. The document provides guidance to companies and non-state actors on how to credibly use carbon credits as part of their climate commitments and the associated claims they can make regarding that use.
“This information will be of particular interest to any group that participates in voluntary carbon markets,” said Kevin Schwartzenberg, SECC assistant vice president and primary author of the analysis. “But many other parties will have interest in the latest information released by VCMI, even if they don’t directly participate.”
An explanation of the VCMI CoP is available here for download.
However, identifying and purchasing high-quality carbon credits is just one piece of what the VCMI CoP requires, as it is part of an overall organizational decarbonization strategy. The SECC team helps organizations measure, manage, mitigate, report and neutralize greenhouse gas emissions across their entire value chains. Measurement and reporting is often the first step in this process.
“This way, they know what their emissions are from the start,” said Kristin Hanczor, SECC project director. “From there, we work together with our clients on plans to help them reduce their overall emissions. This includes how they can work within the carbon markets to compensate for – or neutralize – their remaining emissions.”
“Before making a VCMI claim, organizations should fully understand the additional requirements for carbon credit purchases, such as increasing the amount of Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market-certified credits each year,” said Bridget Venne, SECC assistant vice president and technical principal. “They should also understand the additional reporting and transparency that VCMI requires outside of carbon credit purchases, such as publicly disclosing the percentage of capital expenditure and operational expenditure dedicated to GHG mitigation.”
For more information, contact the WSP team at: [email protected].
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