The Carbon Credit Quality Initiative (CCQI) was established to provide free, transparent information on the quality of different types of carbon credits, enabling users to understand what types of carbon credits are more likely to deliver actual emission reductions as well as social and environmental benefits.

CCQI was founded and is managed by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US) and Oeko-Institut, a leading European research and consultancy institution working for a sustainable future. Scores published by CCQI are derived from applying the CCQI assessment methodology. The assessment is led by Oeko-Institut, with support from experienced carbon market experts from Carbon Limits, Greenhouse Gas Management Institute (GHGMI), INFRAS and Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). Draft results are reviewed by the full CCQI team before public release. All experts involved in CCQI have deep expertise in carbon markets and are not employed by project developers or carbon crediting programs.

CCQI is currently financed by the founding non-profit organizations: EDF, WWF-US, and Oeko-Institut. CCQI is not funded, even in part, by revenues related to carbon credits.

Carbon credits are a tool to finance climate mitigation projects. The revenues from carbon credits can enable the implementation of projects which would not have otherwise taken place. The countries and companies buying carbon credits can claim financing those emissions reductions and removals.

For carbon credits to contribute to global climate goals, their greenhouse gas mitigation impact must be assured. Credits generated and sold into the market which fail to meet high standards can undermine climate action.

Carbon markets are experiencing massive growth despite concerns regarding the quality of credits and a lack of clarity for buyers how to navigate the diverse offerings in the market. CCQI aims to address this uncertainty and enhance demand for high-quality carbon credits as buyers become equipped with the tools needed to make more informed purchasing decisions. This shift in demand and the quality assessments by CCQI might in turn encourage carbon crediting programs, project developers, and other market participants to pursue the highest standards and align the use of carbon credits with the Paris Agreement.

The IC-VCM is a governance body established for the voluntary carbon market which will set threshold standards for carbon credits against Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), under which credits will be deemed eligible or not eligible. CCQI does not establish a threshold standard but recognizes that carbon credits often have a broad spectrum of quality. CCQI uses scores from 1 to 5 (with 5 being the highest quality score) and applies them to different "quality objectives" to allow users to understand the nuances and trade-offs in the quality of different types of carbon credits and make more informed decisions. CCQI will be complementary to the IC-VCM, and we expect that there will be some alignment between CCQI's methodology and IC-VCM's assessment of carbon credit quality.

Scores are currently available for the following project types:

• Avoided planned deforestation
• Avoided unplanned deforestation
• Commercial afforestation
• Efficient cookstoves
• Establishment of natural forests
• Household biodigesters
• Hydropower
• Improved forest management
• Industrial biodigesters fed with livestock manure
• Landfill gas utilization
• Leak repair in natural gas transmission and distribution systems
• Recovery of associated gas from oil fields
• Solar photovoltaic power
• Wind power (onshore)

The project types are currently assessed across five crediting programs (American Carbon Registry, Climate Action Reserve, Clean Development Mechanism, Gold Standard, and Verra's Verified Carbon Standard). In addition, two complementary standards have been assessed: the Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards and the Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SD VISta), both operated by Verra.

CCQI plans to assess more project types in the future. As carbon markets grow and evolve, the CCQI project team will continue to work with stakeholders to further refine our approach and provide updates on our website. The CCQI project team will explore opportunities to present CCQI insights and resources to interested buyers and will partner with stakeholders to ensure greater scale of CCQI's impact.

CCQI developed its own methodology to assess different types of carbon credits against seven "quality objectives". The methodology can be applied to individual projects and to broader categories or types of carbon credits based on their underlying characteristics like project type, carbon crediting program, and host country. Applying the methodology produces a score of 1 to 5 for each quality objective, criterion, and sub-criterion. The methodology is publicly available so stakeholders can use it themselves to derive their own scores alongside the scores produced by the CCQI team. Details of the methodology can be found here.

The quality of carbon credits depends on many different factors. CCQI uses comprehensive quality criteria that are weighed based on their importance and the context in which the carbon credit is generated and used. Together, these criteria contribute to the scores for the following quality objectives:

• Robust Determination of the GHG Emissions Impact: The emission reductions or removals are "additional" (i.e., they would not have taken place without the added incentive from carbon credits) and are robustly quantified.
• Avoiding Double Counting: The emission reductions are not double counted (i.e., they are not used more than once to achieve climate targets or goals).
• Addressing Non-Permanence: The credit has zero risks of the underlying climate benefit being lost (e.g., stored carbon being released through natural or human-caused impacts) — or has adequate provisions to mitigate those risks.
• Facilitating the Transition towards Net Zero: The mitigation project contributes toward the adoption of low, zero, or negative emissions technologies and practices and avoids lock-in of technologies and practices that lead to continuous GHG emissions.
• Strong Institutional Arrangements: Strong institutional arrangements of the carbon crediting program ensure good practice in governance, transparency and third-party auditing.
• Positive Environmental & Social Impacts: Robust safeguards prevent negative impacts and ensure the project contributes to sustainable development and improves adaptation & resilience.
• Climate Ambition of the Host Country: The project's host country has committed to global temperature goals and is pursuing an ambitious NDC.

The scores are designed to provide users with a nuanced picture of how different types of carbon credits perform on quality. This allows users to make informed decisions based on which quality features and scores are most important to them.

The methodology gives different weights to different quality criteria but allows users to access the individual scores for all sub-criteria. Depending on the criterion, the assessment methodology uses two methods for scoring: 1) a simple point system, in which more points lead to a higher score; and 2) inverse weighing, where a score weighs the stronger, the more it differs from maximal possible score of 5. This means that a low score in one criterion cannot be easily compensated by high scores in other criteria. Inverse weighing is used to ensure that the carbon credit must score high in all criteria in order to receive an overall high score. This approach is used because high quality of carbon credits can only be ensured if they perform well against all criteria. For example, a carbon credit type with a low likelihood of additionality will receive a low score on quality objective 1 even if the emission reductions are very robustly quantified.

CCQI distinguishes between three forms of double counting: double issuance, double use, and double claiming.

Stakeholders hold varying views regarding whether, or under which circumstances, the use of carbon credits towards voluntary targets constitutes double claiming or whether and under which circumstances double claiming with host country NDC should be avoided when using carbon credits towards voluntary commitments. Avoiding such double claiming would require host countries to authorize the use of the carbon credits for Article 6 purposes and to apply "corresponding adjustments".

CCQI allows users of the scoring tool to determine scores both for carbon credits that are authorized for Article 6 purposes and for which corresponding adjustments will be applied, and for carbon credits that have not been authorized. Some criteria, such as the robustness of the carbon crediting program's procedures for avoiding double claiming (criterion 2.4.2), are only applicable to carbon credits that are authorized for Article 6 purposes. This twin-track approach allows the scoring to be adapted to the needs of the user.

Environmental and social safeguards are an important quality criterion in CCQI's assessments. CCQI's methodology considers how robust a program's environmental and social safeguards are, whether the project type contributes to sustainable development, and whether it contributes to improving adaptation and resilience. Local stakeholder consultation, explicit protections for local communities and ecosystems, and adherence to human rights are integral parts of CCQI's assessment methodology.

CCQI's methodology is a transparent and open-access product that is available for public use. Applying the methodology, however, requires a thorough understanding of carbon crediting. Some criteria for assessing carbon credit types are straightforward to apply, but others require deep technical expertise, such as assessing the robustness of methodological approaches for quantifying emission reductions and removals. The methodology should be applied by independent experts that do not have financial or other interests in specific evaluation results. CCQI also offers an Excel tool [LINK] to help users apply the methodology and derive their own scores.

Not at all. CCQI is designed as a transparent and independent source of quality assessment to help carbon crediting programs and other market stakeholders improve, and to help buyers compare different types of carbon credits. Carbon crediting programs play an important role to ensure quality. By assessing programs, we hope to catalyze better understanding of how carbon crediting programs can fill their important role.

While bespoke carbon credits may be able to attain a high-level of quality without being issued by an independent carbon crediting program, a buyer takes on more risk by purchasing these credits. Buyers should be aware of this reputational risk and the potential incentives they may send to other project developers to not register with an established carbon crediting program, which could eventually erode confidence in the quality of carbon credit markets.

No, CCQI does not assess individual projects, but others may use the CCQI methodology for project-specific assessments. The CCQI scores published on our website only assess different types of carbon credits. A type of carbon credit represents a combination of a project type (e.g., landfill gas utilization), the carbon crediting program under which the carbon credits are issued (e.g., the Verified Carbon Standard), the quantification methodology that has been applied (e.g., the Clean Development Mechanism methodology ACM0001) and the country where the project is located (e.g., Brazil).

Scores provided on the CCQI website are representative of the typical conditions of a given carbon credit type under the circumstances selected in the scoring tool, not of any specific project. Scores are risk-based and indicative of the confidence or likelihood that the assessment subject meets each quality objective. Scores are illustrated on an interval basis from 1 to 5, with 5 representing the highest score. The scores have the following meaning:

"NA" (not assessed) means that a quality objective or criterion has not been assessed. "NR" (not relevant) means that the quality objective or criterion is not relevant for the carbon credit under consideration. CCQI displays a separate score for each quality objective to present a nuanced picture of how different types of carbon credits perform. The CCQI project team does not aggregate the scores of quality objectives into a single score. CCQI does not set a "good/bad" threshold either and instead allows users to determine which quality features and scores they most value.

No. Quality objective 5 evaluates a program's governance, transparency, and third-party auditing rules. These evaluation criteria are only one part of CCQI's evaluation of crediting program's rules since CCQI also assesses crediting program rules under quality objectives 1, 2, 3, and 6. Quality objective 5 aims to assess the extent to which a program has strong institutional arrangements and processes in place to ensure that the program is governed consistently with its mission, that stakeholders have a transparent and accessible view into a program's decision-making and that third-party auditing is robust. Failure to score high on these criteria may indicate that a crediting program would benefit from a stronger or more comprehensive ruleset, but the score for quality objective 5 should not be interpreted as an overall score of the crediting program.

To use CCQI's scoring tool to assess a carbon credit's quality, you will need the following information:

• The project type of your credit (e.g., landfill gas utilization)
• The carbon crediting program (e.g., Clean Development Mechanism)
• The complementary standard (e.g., SDVISta)
• The host country where the project is located
• When the emissions reductions or removals occurred
• The quantification methodology under which the credit was generated (e.g., AMS-III.G.: Landfill methane recovery)

Additional prompts may be asked, depending on the answer to these questions. The requested information should be accessible from the crediting program's website or project database. Alternatively, you can request this information from the carbon credit owner or project developer you intend to purchase from. In some instances, it is possible to answer "I do not know". In this case, the lowest score among the potential answers is calculated.

No. CCQI does not score individual carbon credits or specific projects. Scores produced by CCQI are representative of the typical conditions of a given project type under the circumstances selected in the scoring tool. It is fully expected that individual projects can perform differently because each project is unique and project owners can and should take measures to address areas of risk for a given project type. CCQI assessments should be supplemented with other due diligence measures for best results.

In all cases, additional due diligence is recommended when assessing individual carbon credit projects, such as conducting independent research on the project, conducting site visits, or soliciting third-party expertise.

CCQI's methodology uses an approach referred to as "inverse weighing" to aggregate scores for criteria into a total score for each quality objective. Under inverse weighing, the lower the score, the higher its overall weight. This can lead to an overall quality objective score that is lower than the criteria scores under that quality objective. This approach is used because it requires that a carbon credit type performs well on many criteria in order to get a high score for a quality objective. If the performance is mediocre on several criteria, the overall quality objective may not be fulfilled at all, and thus a lower score than the individual criteria scores is assigned.

Some quality objectives contain complementary criteria that are only applicable under certain conditions. This applies, for example, for criteria that are only evaluated if carbon credits are authorized for use under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (e.g., criteria 2.4.1 and 2.4.2). In these cases, the scoring tool returns an "NR" (not relevant) for these criteria.

Some sub-criteria have not been assessed. This holds for criteria that can only be applied to individual projects, which is outside the current scope of CCQI assessments (e.g., criterion 6.3 on a project's "contribution to adaptation and resilience"). Moreover, some criteria have not been assessed because the necessary information is not yet available (e.g., criterion 2.4.1 on the host country readiness to authorize carbon credits for Article 6 purposes) or due to our limited resources (e.g., quality objective 7 on host country ambition). In these cases, the scoring tool returns an "NA" (not assessed) for the criterion. Furthermore, the function for calculating the score for the respective quality objective has been adapted in the scoring tool to reflect cases where criteria are not assessed.