Integrity Council Approves Six Carbon Removal Methods, Expanding Market Integrity. ESG Broadcast Shares Key Takeaways
On October 1, 2025, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) approved six new methodologies for engineered carbon dioxide removal. These (Carbon Dioxide Removal) CDR projects will significantly expand the supply of high-integrity carbon credits. This crucial development allows high-integrity CDR projects to issue Core Carbon Principles (CCP)-labelled credits. The council had previously approved three biochar methodologies back in July, 2025.
The latest CDR methodologies approved to issue CCP-labelled credits are:
- Gold Standard – Carbon Sequestration Through Accelerated Carbonation of Concrete Aggregate (v1.0)
- Isometric – Biomass Geological Storage (v1.0-1.1)
- Isometric – Bio-oil Geological Storage (v1.0-1.1)
- Isometric – Subsurface Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (v1.0)
- Isometric – Biogenic Carbon Capture and Storage (v1.1)
- Isometric – Direct Air Capture (v1.1)
These new engineered CDR methods are projected to bring millions of high-quality credits to the voluntary market annually. For instance, 24 Isometric projects anticipate issuing 3.2 million credits yearly. The newly approved Gold Standard methodology also expects to generate over 9,000 yearly credits from 15 registered projects. Engineered CDR currently represents less than one percent of issued market volume.
The Integrity Council also granted full approval to two important forestry methodologies CAR Mexico Forest Protocol v3 and VM0047 v1.1 for immediate market use. CAR Mexico Forest Protocol methodology update allowed for a variable market leakage rate that can now reach as high as forty percent. Over 8.1 million credits were already issued under this protocol. Projects using this methodology can now generate credits that can be given the CCP label, provided that two conditions are met:
- A minimum 40-year permanence commitment is in place, and
- Where the market leakage rate is set based on the comparison of the cumulative project harvest volume with the cumulative baseline harvest volume.
VM0047 v1 which was approved by the Integrity Council in December 2024 and updated in July 2025 has also undergone a minor update. It allows project activities on forested lands, provided the area has not been managed for wood products and extends the use of remote sensing data to estimate pre-existing woody biomass at the start date and GPS coordinates or physical markers to identify trees.
No credits have been issued yet for the version VM0047 methodology. Specifically, Version 1 has two registered projects and an additional 52 in the early registration phase, collectively expected to produce 6.5 million credits each year. Version 1.1 has not yet registered any projects, but 11 projects are progressing through the initial development stages, projected to issue 3 million credits annually.
Annette Nazareth, Chair of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, said: “We are pleased to announce these new approvals for methodologies in a variety of emissions reductions and removals categories. The science is clear that both reductions and removals are critical to effective climate action. These latest approvals will open up new options for integrity-focused buyers to broaden their portfolios of carbon credits across a range of high impact categories.”
Strategic significance lies in providing buyers with a much broader range of climate investment choices globally and carbon market’s ability to price carbon emissions, channeling private capital toward clean technologies and incentivizing the lowest-cost global emissions reductions needed to meet climate goals.
