Can Voluntary Carbon Standards Simplify Rule Books Without Losing Rigor?

By Michael Coren of Ecosystem Marketplace

Voluntary carbon standards are busy fine-tuning themselves for the future. Officials at the major voluntary market standards – Climate Action Reserve (CAR), American Carbon Registry (ACR), Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), Gold Standard and others – have stepped up efforts to streamline their programs and ensure a future will be waiting beyond the storm clouds.

Everyone has their own approach, but most have chosen the same focus as that of market-leading VCS: simplicity itself.

“The big picture is streamlining to make the Verified Carbon Standard more useful for developers, verifiers and validators,” says VCS Program Manager Jerry Seager about its first major makeover since 2007. “We were very careful to make sure we were not changing things that were going to be to the detriment of anybody. Nothing was dropped. It’s clarifications and additions.”

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