Search Climate Insights Directory

The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), supported by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) and Promethium Carbon, has designed two financial instruments—a carbon credit-backed bond and a carbon repo facility—to address the supply-demand imbalance and liquidity challenges in South Africa's voluntary carbon market (VCM). These instruments aim to transform carbon credits into investable assets to mobilize private capital for climate mitigation projects.

This technical guide by RMI analyzes the market, quality risks, and methodological evolution of clean and improved cookstove carbon credits. It details the transition from legacy methodologies, which faced allegations of over-crediting, to newer, more rigorous standards like VM0050 and the forthcoming CLEAR methodology. The document provides a detailed risk assessment, highlighting monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) as a high-concern area due to behavioral complexities such as stove stacking and the Hawthorne effect.

This technical guide by RMI analyzes the voluntary carbon market (VCM) for improved rice cultivation, focusing on the transition from invalidated CDM-based credits to more rigorous new methodologies. It details the primary and secondary practices used to reduce methane emissions, evaluates quality risks such as additionality and MRV, and provides guidance for stakeholders to identify high-integrity projects.

This technical explainer by RMI analyzes the voluntary carbon market (VCM) for ozone-depleting substances (ODS) recovery and destruction credits. It details how these projects provide high-additionality climate benefits by permanently destroying potent greenhouse gases like CFCs, while identifying significant logistical, legal, and technical barriers to scaling, particularly in developing nations.

The Carbon Crediting Data Framework (CCDF), developed by RMI's Carbon Markets Initiative, is a public toolkit designed to standardize and organize carbon crediting data in the voluntary carbon market (VCM). It aims to replace static PDFs and fragmented data with a common language and structure to reduce transaction costs and improve credit quality assessment.

This briefing by Zero Carbon Analytics examines the systemic failures of carbon offsetting, arguing that these mechanisms often increase global emissions rather than reduce them. The document details how both compliance and voluntary carbon markets suffer from low environmental integrity, lack of additionality, and fraudulent practices, particularly in forestry projects. It concludes that carbon offsets are not a valid climate solution and that priority must be given to direct emission mitigation over offsetting or unproven large-scale carbon removal technologies.

This guide by RMI examines the voluntary carbon market, detailing the six-stage lifecycle of a carbon credit and proposing three 'unlocks'—reducing development costs, differentiating supply, and increasing transparency—to address scarcity and widespread mistrust in the market.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) provides guidance for organizations on the voluntary use of nature-based solution (NBS) carbon credits through 2040. The document establishes a framework of 'guard rails' to ensure that the use of these credits supports the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C warming limit without reducing the pace of an organization's own emissions reductions.

A report by Friends of the Earth International examining how fossil fuel actors utilize the voluntary carbon market to sustain the fossil fuel economy through offsets.

This report by Friends of the Earth International, authored by Professor Doreen Stabinsky, examines how the fossil fuel sector attempts to expand the voluntary carbon market to sustain a fossil fuel-based economy.