Project Verification & Registration

The role of verification is to inform the buyer what they are buying and whether it is real i.e. that the credit has been earned from a genuine emission reduction project; that has been implemented and verified according to a leading international standard and most importantly that the credit resides in the registry that has been appointed by that standards authority to issue and manage the credits earned from projects in accordance with those standards.

A previous conflict of interest arose from the fact that verification auditors are currently chosen and paid by a project’s developer. There is this pressure on auditors to approve projects in order to preserve their business relationships with the developers. This compromises the auditors’ independence and neutrality. To account for this all premium projects are now validated by a third party verification auditor to approve and accept the project prior to the issuance of the carbon credit.

The three main registries for the voluntary markets are :

• APX
• Caisse des Dépôts, CDC Climat
• Markit