ICVCM Appoints Amy Merrill as Interim Chief Operating Officer

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) has appointed Amy Merrill as interim Chief Operating Officer, succeeding William McDonnell who is departing to become Chief Financial Officer at Insurance Australia Group. Merrill brings over 20 years of climate and carbon finance policy experience, including a decade as senior lawyer at the UNFCCC secretariat.

Merrill, who holds qualifications as a UK lawyer, joins from C2ES where she served as Senior Director and Head of Global Carbon Markets. She has been working with the ICVCM's Executive Secretariat since February 2023. Her background includes leading UNFCCC legal support for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, overseeing the Kyoto Protocol's flexible mechanisms, and launching the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee. Prior to multilateral roles, she worked as a carbon and climate finance lawyer with multilateral development banks and investment banks in London.

The leadership transition occurs at a critical juncture for the ICVCM as it moves from rule-setting into active assessment of carbon-crediting programs and credit categories. McDonnell, who joined as the organisation's first staff member in October 2021, oversaw the development and publication of the Core Carbon Principles, Assessment Framework, and assessment procedures. His departure follows two years of stakeholder consultation and the establishment of the ICVCM's governance infrastructure.

Merrill has signalled that the coming months will focus on completing assessments of programs and credit categories, paving the way for the first CCP-labelled credits to enter the market. The ICVCM expects to announce its first assessment results for carbon-crediting programs and categories in early 2024. The next version of the Assessment Framework is targeted for implementation in 2026, with expert workstreams already being convened to identify best practices in key policy and market areas.

Key figure — 2026 — scheduled implementation year for the next version of the ICVCM Assessment Framework