Verra thanks the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), including its advisory firm SYSTEMIQ, for conducting a stakeholder survey on incentivizing companies to go beyond their science-based targets to mitigate emissions outside their value chains.
Verra urges all stakeholders to complete the online survey before the 12 August deadline.

Key points made by Verra in its response to the survey:

Verra provided input on this survey, highlighting the following:

  • Companies must first abate their own emissions in alignment with a 1.5-degree pathway.
  • Companies should be recognized for going beyond such actions. The main incentive for them to do so is the ability to make a compensation claim, which links their residual carbon footprint with results-based outcomes.
  • High-integrity carbon crediting programs provide the best guarantee of results-based outcomes. These programs issue credits using rigorous methodologies and third-party expert auditing, and operate registries to prevent the double counting of credits.
  • Alternatives to compensation claims, namely financial claims, lack any assurance of environmental integrity. A transfer of finance does not, on its own, guarantee that emissions are being reduced or removed. Abandoning the compensation claim model would set back climate action significantly, precisely when greater action is needed.
  • Verra calls on SBTi to develop a clear compensation claim that includes reductions and removals and that is made through the use of high-integrity carbon crediting programs.

About Verra

Verra is a mission-driven non-profit organization tackling the world’s most intractable environmental and social challenges. Verra supports climate action and sustainable development with standards, tools and programs that credibly, transparently, and robustly assess environmental and social impacts and enable funding for sustaining and scaling up projects that verifiably deliver these benefits.

Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program is the world’s leading carbon crediting program, having issued over 721 million credits from over 1,700 projects around the world.

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Media Contact:

Anne Thiel, Senior Manager, Communications
athiel@verra.org | +1 (202) 470 5664