ICVCM Approves Six Engineered Carbon Dioxide Removal Methodologies

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market approved six engineered carbon dioxide removal methodologies, enabling CCP-labelled credits from technologies including direct air capture, bio-oil geological storage, and biomass carbon removal and storage. The ICVCM also granted full approval to the CAR Mexico Forest Protocol v3 and VM0047 v1.1, covering improved forest management and afforestation activities respectively.

The six approved CDR methodologies are all from the Isometric and Gold Standard programmes, covering accelerated carbonation of concrete aggregate, biomass geological storage, bio-oil geological storage, subsurface biomass carbon removal and storage, biogenic carbon capture and storage, and direct air capture. Total issuance under the approved methodologies is approximately 30,000 credits to date, but 24 projects registered under Isometric methodologies are expected to issue over 3.2 million credits annually. Fifteen projects under the Gold Standard methodology are expected to issue over 9,000 credits annually. The UK and EU are considering integrating CDR credits into their Emissions Trading Schemes within the next five years.

Engineered CDR currently represents less than 1% of the voluntary carbon market by issued volume but accounts for a considerable share of forward sales and is expected to grow significantly. Three of the five largest supplier projects of durable CDR are based in the Global South, highlighting the category's potential to direct climate finance beyond developed economies. The Gold Standard CDR methodology carries a condition requiring that the carbon dioxide source be via direct air capture or biogenic origin, and projects must comply with a baseline carbonation rule update.

For the CAR Mexico Forest Protocol v3, a previous remedial approval was upgraded to full approval after CAR updated its leakage accounting to allow a variable market leakage rate of up to 40%, replacing a flat 20% rate, in line with the latest available research. For VM0047 v1.1 covering afforestation, the updated version allows project activities on forested lands and extends use of remote sensing data. No credits have yet been issued under VM0047, but 52 projects are at earlier stages of registration expected to issue 6.5 million credits annually under v1 alone.

Key figure — 3.2 million credits expected annually from 24 projects under Isometric CDR methodologies