Additionality and monitoring: ensuring high-quality carbon credits
Additionality for high-quality carbon credits
When it comes to ensuring that carbon credits are high quality, one important principle is that you can demonstrate that, without the intervention of the carbon credit buyer, the carbon reduction or carbon capture activity could not have gone ahead.
In the case of our woodland projects, this means we can show that without the intervention of Forest Carbon and its partners, the trees wouldn't be there. The same goes for healthy peat after peatland restoration.
Additionality is tested stringently under the Woodland Carbon Code and Peatland Code, which look at financial, legal, and behavioural barriers.
Monitoring
It is not enough to plant a woodland or restore a peatland and then just leave it. Continual monitoring is crucial, particularly if carbon claims are going to be made over the project’s lifetime.
Forest Carbon regularly visits its projects to check on their progress. In addition, under the respective Code, all of our woodlands are signed off at planting and then audited at year 5 and every 10 years thereafter, by an appointed Validation/Verification body (VVB). Peatlands are the same, however, they must be validated within one year of restoration ending.
A Validation/Verification Body (VVB) is an independent third-party organisation that assesses projects to ensure they meet the high standards of the Code.
