(Victoria, B.C.) – Today, the British Columbia Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released a flawed report that calls into question the carbon neutrality claims of the provincial government. Part of this report highlighted the Darkwoods project, a large forest conservation project near Kootenay Lake. The project was independently validated and verified under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the accepted global leader in the voluntary carbon market. To date, almost 1,000 projects around the world have used the VCS to issue more than 118 million Verified Carbon Units (VCUs). Each VCU represents an emissions reduction of one metric tonne of carbon dioxide.
In response to the report, VCS Chief Executive Officer David Antonioli issued the following statement:
“In just a few short pages, the OAG has produced a flawed and inaccurate report that ignores the broadly accepted principles, best practices and common sense that guide carbon markets, thereby isolating British Columbia from the entire global community.
What is particularly unfortunate about this whole process is that it didn’t have to happen. I have reached out to the OAG on multiple occasions offering to help ensure that the report would be as accurate as possible. The OAG ignored these offers.
In the end, the OAG should be clear about what it is proposing in this report, namely that all carbon projects in British Columbia need to follow a different standard which has been imposed without the benefit of transparency or international expertise. With the number of egregious errors in this report, it is abundantly clear that the OAG should embrace the international climate community, instead of pushing it away.”
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Founded in 2005 by the Climate Group, the International Emissions Trading Association, the World Economic Forum, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Verified Carbon Standard has become one of the world’s most widely used carbon accounting standards. VCS has revolutionized the market developing trusted and innovative tools, as well as pioneering efforts to develop standardized methods that will streamline the project approval process, reduce transaction costs and enhance transparency. Across the world, projects using the VCS Standard have issued more than 118 million credits.