This blog post has been updated to include a copy of Verra’s updated CORSIA application

While Covid-19 has put a lot of things on hold, progress is still being made on other fronts. After the aviation industry committed to carbon-neutral growth post-2020, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) was implemented to help the industry achieve this goal. The Scheme complements other measures, such as increasing fuel efficiency and operational improvements, by allowing airlines to buy emissions reduction offsets from other sectors to compensate for any increase in their own emissions. While the impact of Covid-19 on air travel has led to some adjustments to CORSIA , the approval of programs like the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) made on CORSIA so far sets up airlines up with a pathway for more environmentally sustainable operations.

In March 2020, the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program was accepted as one of six programs eligible to supply emission reduction units for compliance under CORSIA.

To answer all your questions about this new opportunity, Verra has developed several resources to help stakeholders navigate CORSIA:

  • Webinars to Review the ICAO Announcement: We held two webinars to review the decision of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council and invited our stakeholders to bring their questions about this decision to the table. (Click here for the original announcement of the VCS Program’s acceptance; the recording of the English webinar can be found here; the recording of the Spanish webinar can be found here.)
  • Eligibility Guidance – VCUs for Use in CORSIA: The purpose of this guidance is to clearly identify which VCUs are eligible for use in CORSIA and to highlight how such eligible VCUs will be identified on the Verra Registry.
  • CORSIA FAQs: On this page, we have captured the most commonly asked questions from our webinars and from other exchanges, and provided our responses.

Since the March ICAO decision, Verra has resubmitted its application by the 10 April deadline (view the re-submitted application here).

In that submission, we closed the gaps ICAO specifically requested with respect to: 1) sustainable development contributions — Verra is now in the process of developing a standalone VCS Sustainable Development Contributions Report template which would allow projects to report on their contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); and 2) JNR program crediting periods — extending it to a minimum of 20 years for programs wishing to sell into the CORSIA market. Verra also requested clarifications on the conditions placed on select project types and suggested an alternative approach to assessing AFOLU activities (see Questions #1 and #2 of our CORSIA FAQs).

While ICAO originally planned to be making some decisions in June of this year, it is our understanding that all decisions by ICAO in respect of CORSIA will now be made in December.

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at secretariat@verra.org.