In 2024, ACR team members visited fourteen projects, including the following:

• Affinity Mine Methane Incineration Project (ACR674)
• Beckley Pocahontas Mine Methane Incineration Project (ACR746)
• Bonny Abandoned Mine Methane Recovery Project (ACR806)
• Buchanan VAM VS-16 (ACR908)
• Carlisle Abandoned Mine Methane Recovery Project (ACR930)
• Cumberland Forest – Lonesome Pine Improved Forest Management Project (ACR279)
• Greenwood Dairy Anaerobic Digester (ACR355)
• Lower Green Swamp Preserve (ACR483)
• Navajo Nation Forestry Project (ACR555)
• New Future Abandoned Mine Methane Recovery Project (ACR669)
• Perennial CMM Emerald Mine AMM Flare Project (ACR811)
• Rudio Mountain Forest Carbon Project (ACR1053)
• Shoal Creek Mine Methane Incineration Project (ACR807)
• Winston Creek Forest Carbon Project (ACR 389)

SPOTLIGHT: Forestry Team Visits Winston Creek Late last year, members of the ACR Forestry Team had a chance to visit the Winston Creek Forest Carbon Project near Morton, WA. Developed by Port Blakely, the project is set in western Washington amongst some of the most productive forests in North America. The Winston Creek project offered an excellent opportunity for the ACR team to engage directly with managers in a working forest and to get boots-on-the-ground time at one of our forest carbon projects. ACR offers our sincere thanks to Port Blakely for hosting us and for generously sharing their time and expertise.

 

When it comes to climate action, sooner is better than later. The world needs to act with urgency and to encourage early and decisive action, even as science, technologies and best practices continue to evolve.

We applaud first movers, like Nike, who take ambitious, voluntary actions to reduce their own operational and supply chain emissions. If more companies had acted like Nike did nearly 20 years ago, the world would be in a better place. Instead, many companies eschewed climate leadership, which, in addition to the lack of national climate regulation in the U.S. and other major emitting countries, explains the current climate crisis.

To meet the Paris Agreement climate targets – the world’s best hope to avoid catastrophe – protection, conservation and restoration of forests are critical. These actions are also among the most readily deployable, affordable and scalable available today. When it comes to mitigating reversal risks associated with these projects, ACR has robust, legally binding and enforceable systems in place to ensure the integrity of the carbon credits we issue.

ACR has separate mechanisms to address unintentional (e.g., wildfire) and intentional (e.g., over-harvesting) reversals from forest and land use projects. Project Proponents are legally bound to fully compensate for intentional reversals. For unintentional reversals, ACR manages a diverse, well-capitalized Buffer Pool. Currently the ACR Buffer Pool represents approximately 20% of credits issued from projects that require a Buffer Pool contribution. ACR has yet to experience an unintentional reversal from its Forestry and Land Use portfolio of nearly 80 projects.

ACR’s Buffer Pool contains a diverse mix of credits, which adds integrity to the pool overall. Many of the credits in the ACR Buffer Pool are from project activities that are not reversable, such as landfill gas and switch to low Global Warming Potential refrigerants.  In addition to the diversity of types of credits in the Buffer Pool, the number of projects being backed by the pool and their geographic diversity makes it very unlikely that a single catastrophic event could cause a reversal that would threaten to deplete the pool.

And because ACR does not refund credits deposited to the Buffer Pool, the overall pool continues to grow. In addition, in the case of an unintentional reversal, ACR follows its protocol as detailed in the Buffer Pool Terms and Conditions for cancellation of credits, including project type and vintage. As a result, it is uncertain whether older vintage non-forestry credits will ever be canceled to compensate for unintentional reversals.

In summary, ACR is confident in the rigor of our approach to mitigate the risk of reversals for forestry and land use projects, and we will continue to evaluate other options that become available in the market.

ACR RESPONSES TO INQUIRIES FROM BLOOMBERG

Below are ACR’s responses to email inquiries from Ben Elgin of Bloomberg.

JUNE 2024

1) Critics of rules that allow buffer-credit substitution fear that this will allow in lower-quality credits, and thus undermine the effectiveness of this as an insurance mechanism. I realize ACR tightened the rules a bit (around vintage, if I recall correctly) a couple of years back. It would be great to discuss this and hear ACR’s thoughts on this criticism.

First it is important to note that the ACR Buffer Pool is only used to compensate for unintentional reversals. Intentional reversals must be compensated directly by the Project Proponent based on a legally binding agreement with ACR.

ACR allows Buffer Pool contributions from any ACR project type, with the vintage of credits used for Buffer Pool Contributions limited to no more than five (5) years prior to the vintage of the carbon credits being verified and issued. ACR allows for non-reversible tons to be contributed to the Buffer Pool to ensure the pool is robust and can mitigate large or widespread natural disturbances. Similar to any risk mitigation mechanism, diversity in the makeup of this pool adds resilience. A larger and more-diverse credit pool, in terms of geography, project type, and reversal risk, is better.

ACR has a large and growing volume of credits issued to aggregated or programmatic projects, which by definition have a wide geographic spread and inherent diversity, decreasing the likelihood of a single catastrophic event causing a reversal. In the event of an unintentional reversal from a project, ACR cancels credits in the Buffer Pool as detailed in the ACR Buffer Pool Terms and Conditions Section VIII. ACR has yet to experience an unintentional reversal from its AFOLU portfolio (nearly 80 projects) that requires compensation from the Buffer Pool.

2) The Nike gas-substitution project is the biggest in the pool, making up more than 18% of the total. I’d like to discuss this project…I thought it was mostly dormant. But many who worked on this two decades ago say that carbon credits didn’t spur the gas-substitution work. I’d be curious to hear ACR’s thoughts on this. And I’d like to know who supplied these credits to the buffer pool?

The Nike project was one of the world’s first voluntary corporate GHG emission reduction projects and earned credits by replacing SF6 – a highly potent GHG with a GWP of over 22,000 – in its most popular shoes, retooling its manufacturing and making changes to its supply chain accordingly. The project is dormant in that no credits have been issued to it since 2005.

3) There are three renewable-energy projects in here, which combine to make up around 15% of the pool. These types of credits have long been criticized for lack of additionality. People involved with two of these projects have told me they would have been built without carbon credits. I’d be curious to hear ACR’s thoughts on this.

The renewable energy credits were verified to meet additionality and other requirements of the methodology.

AUGUST 2024

1) You mentioned in the June email that the vintage of credits used for buffer-pool contributions can be no more than five years prior to the vintage of the carbon credits being verified/issued. I just want to clarify: This is a fairly new requirement that doesn’t apply retroactively to previous buffer contributions, is that accurate?

The ACR Buffer Pool Terms and Conditions requirement regarding the vintage of credits contributed to the Buffer Pool has been in place since the beginning of 2021 and is not retroactive.

2) In the ACR blog post, it says that reversals for projects that contributed AFOLU credits to the buffer pool would be compensated with AFOLU credits from the buffer pool. Is there a way for buyers – or the general public – to see what credits, or types of credits, were contributed to the buffer pool by each project?

All credits that have been contributed to the ACR Buffer Pool are published on the ACR registry. Contributions are not linked to specific projects because the mechanism is a pool. Protocol for use of credits from the pool to compensate for unintentional reversals is detailed in the ACR Buffer Pool Terms and Conditions.

3) The Nike project looks to be non-additional. The company’s ESG report at the time counted the emission reductions that were then sold as carbon credits. People who worked on this project for Nike tell me that the sale of carbon credits didn’t factor into its decisions/efforts to switch out heat-trapping gases from its shoes. Some of this might be understandable as the carbon market was in its infancy at the time. But what does ACR say to people who are concerned that close to 20% of the buffer pool is from this non-additional project?

ACR refutes your unsupported allegation that the Nike project is non-additional. According to the project documents published on the ACR Registry, the project’s additionality was both regulatory and financial: There were no existing federal, state or local regulatory requirements for the phase-out the use of, capture, and/or destruction of SF6 or C3F8. And at the time of the switch, the price of SF6 was ~$5.25/lb and the replacement gas, C3F8 cost ~$9.25/lb. Neither the performance nor the cost of C3F8 relative to that of SF6 justified Nike’s switch to the use of C3F8. The primary stated reason for Nike to switch gases was to produce a net environmental benefit.

4) Lastly: Several fires have hit carbon projects in the western US this summer. It looks like the Shelly Fire hit ACR733 (Scott River Whiskey) pretty hard; and it may have also impacted ACR732 (Scott River Shackleford). I realize this only recently happened; but do you have any preliminary updates on the fire impacts for ACR carbon projects (such as number of acres impacted or the amount of carbon lost) from this summer?

ACR is aware of the fire burning in or near carbon project areas. However, until the fire is extinguished, the full extent of its impact cannot be safely or accurately assessed. The ACR Buffer Pool Terms & Conditions details how reversals are reported and the volume assessed, and how reversals are verified and ultimately compensated.

If the fire causes a reversal, it would represent the first use of the ACR Buffer Pool to compensate for an unintentional reversal.

The ACR Buffer Pool is used to compensate for unintentional reversals for ACR projects only. Intentional reversals of ACR projects must be compensated directly by the Project Proponent based on a legally binding agreement with ACR. California ARB manages a separate buffer pool to address risk to projects operating in its compliance market.

ACR is headed to New York Climate Week to participate in a range of events, including:

• Xpansiv Climate Week Summit
• Accelerating Climate Action: Delivering High Integrity Carbon Markets
• The Nature Hub at Climate Week New York City 2024
• IETA North America Climate Summit

If you’d like to try to connect in New York, send a note to Brad Kahn, communications director (brad.kahn@winrock.org).

We hope to see you there!

To highlight the positive impacts of carbon projects using ACR methodologies, we recently launched a new series of case studies. The first two case studies include the following:

• Anew-Tomah Highlands Forestry Project: Set on more than 36,000 acres of Acadian Forest in Maine, the project shows how the sale of carbon credits supports conservation and climate goals, while also promoting regional economic development to build the bioeconomy from responsible forestry.
• Tradewater-Thailand Carbon Project: With no law, rule or regulation requiring the destruction of ozone-depleting substances – which are also potent climate-changing gases – and without financial resources to pay for destruction, the Thai government worked with Tradewater to safely and responsibly destroy gas from more than 1,400 cylinders.

In the months ahead, ACR will be developing other case studies to dig into the stories of the people and organizations using carbon markets to drive climate solutions forward.

Destruction of Ozone Depleting Substances from International Sources and Landfill Gas Destruction and Beneficial Use Projects earn CCP Labels

Two ACR methodologies have earned Core Carbon Principle (CCP) approval from the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) in their first round of methodology assessments. Carbon credits issued to projects under the methodologies, Destruction of Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) from International Sources (version 1.0) and Landfill Gas Destruction and Beneficial Use Projects (versions 1.0 and 2.0), are eligible for CCP-Approved status.

The CCP label, now active in the ACR Registry, is applied to credits issued to projects verified for conformance with the methodologies above. Close to two million ACR-issued carbon credits now bear the CCP label.

While ACR views this as an important step forward, we will continue to engage with ICVCM throughout their assessment process with the intent of securing CCP-Approved labels for all credits issued to our portfolio of active methodologies, which includes emission reductions and removals from industrial and nature-based solutions.

ICVCM approved ACR at the program level as “Core Carbon Principles (CCP) Eligible” in April 2024. To become approved, ACR submitted an extensive application to ICVCM for assessment. We provided evidence of being a CORSIA Eligible Emissions Unit Program, in addition to meeting the CCP’s criteria around effective governance, credit tracking, transparency, and robust, independent third-party validation and verification.

Since its founding in 1996 as the world’s first private greenhouse gas registry, ACR has innovated and operationalized key elements of carbon credit quality assurance, including scientific peer-reviewed accounting methodologies and well-accepted approaches to address additionality, leakage, and reversal risk mitigation; oversight of independent third-party verification; and operation of a transparent registry for the issuance and tracking of serialized credits.

ACR’s approach to program quality has earned approval to issue credits for use in regulated carbon markets, including the State of California’s Cap-and-Trade Program, the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), the State of Washington’s Cap-and-Invest Program, and towards compliance with Singapore’s Carbon Pricing Act.

ACR expects additional methodologies to earn ICVCM approval, which will provide confidence to buyers in credit quality and allow finance to flow to impactful climate solutions to support the goals of the Paris Agreement. The urgency of climate change demands nothing less.

About ACR

ACR is an internationally recognized carbon crediting program that operates in global compliance and voluntary carbon markets. A nonprofit enterprise of Winrock International, ACR was founded in 1996 as the first private greenhouse gas (GHG) registry in the world with the mission of harnessing the power of markets to improve the environment. ACR has long pioneered science-based methodologies for activities that reduce and remove GHG emissions in the forestry and land use, energy, and industrial sectors. ACR methodologies are built on the ACR Standard, which is rooted in sound science to ensure the emission reduction and removal credits we issue are real, additional, permanent, and independently verified.

Today, as the Biden-Harris Administration issued its “Voluntary Carbon Markets Joint Policy Statement and Principles,” ACR Executive Director, Mary Grady, offered the following statement:

“ACR welcomes the U.S. Government’s endorsement of the Voluntary Carbon Market as a critical tool in the fight against climate change. The world is facing an urgent, existential challenge. Nothing can move much-needed climate investments as fast as markets. We applaud the United States for recognizing the fundamental role markets play to promote beneficial climate action.”

“ACR’s mission is to create confidence in the integrity of carbon markets because we have long recognized the importance of integrity to unlock the power of markets to finance ambitious climate results. The United States has now put its full weight behind this approach, which aligns well with important global initiatives, including the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) CORSIA and the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Markets Core Carbon Principles, alongside the Paris Agreement’s Article 6. This welcome convergence of credit supply criteria for compliance and voluntary uses will help reduce confusion and provide confidence in carbon markets overall, which we welcome.”

“The work being invested in the Voluntary Carbon Market is a sign of its importance as a climate solution. ACR is heartened to see integrity initiatives settle on a core set of principles to unlock additional private sector action on the carbon credit supply side and climate finance on the demand side. We are actively engaging in and supporting the work underway to shape the market going forward, bringing our decades of expertise to bear and helping our partners navigate the playing field.”

“We urge all companies to engage in high integrity carbon markets. No matter how much work an organization has done to decarbonize, the simple fact is that residual emissions remain. The U.S. Government principles offer additional clarity on acceptable pathways forward to develop and implement plans to abate any emissions that cannot be avoided, including through the use of high-quality carbon credits. ACR stands ready to continue supporting and developing global carbon markets as a tool for urgent, impactful action. The climate, and life on Earth, demands nothing less.”

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About ACR

ACR is an internationally recognized carbon crediting program that operates in global compliance and voluntary carbon markets. A nonprofit enterprise of Winrock International, ACR was founded in 1996 as the first private greenhouse gas (GHG) registry in the world with the mission of harnessing the power of markets to improve the environment. ACR has long pioneered science-based methodologies for activities that reduce and remove GHG emissions in the forestry and land use, energy, and industrial sectors. ACR methodologies are built on the ACR Standard, which is rooted in sound science to ensure the emission reduction and removal credits we issue are real, additional, permanent, and independently verified. Learn more at https://acrcarbon.org/.

When you’re in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging.

Today, the world finds itself in a climate hole, yet we dig ourselves deeper by continuing to emit climate-changing gases into the atmosphere.

Despite this reality, there’s an emerging perception that removals – pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it in long-term storage – are preferable to or more impactful than emissions reductions.

For the atmosphere’s balance sheet, emission reductions and removals are equivalent. Both are vitally important.

For the atmosphere’s balance sheet, emission reductions and removals are equivalent. Both are vitally important.

Andrew Taylor, Senior Technical Manager, Forestry at ACR

A recent peer-reviewed study in Nature Climate Change reinforces this point, finding that the four pathways with the highest scientific confidence and the largest potential scale of global impact are tropical forest reforestation, tropical forest avoided loss, temperate forest reforestation and temperate forest avoided loss. In other words, reforestation (removals) and avoided loss (reductions) are both critical climate actions.

Pathways in the upper right quadrant have both high confidence in scientific foundations and the largest potential scale of global impact. Source: Buma, B., Gordon, D.R., Kleisner, K.M. et al. Expert review of the science underlying nature-based climate solutions. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2024)

On LinkedIn, one of the authors noted that, “the ‘removals only’ focus is wrong,” continuing that, “right now, credits for avoided emissions are cost-effective and plentiful because deforestation releases 1–2 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year. We can stop these emissions but lack the funds.”

Of course, this approach is also in line with the well-established greenhouse gas mitigation hierarchy, which suggests the following order of priority for action: Avoid, reduce, replace, compensate, remove. For natural climate solutions, the priority should be to protect, manage, and then restore lands. When you consider that the world’s forests store 861 gigatonnes of carbon, it becomes clear that there’s no way to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement without protecting forests. Avoiding and reducing emissions should be our first priorities until total emissions go to zero, at least in theory.

In reality, we have hard-to-abate sectors that may never go to zero emissions, so we need a strategy that includes “all of the above,” in a mix that changes over time, as the excellent diagram below shows (from the “Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting” page 19). Before 2030, a well-balanced offset portfolio should focus on emission reductions, with a significant emphasis on nature-based removals as well.

Example of a net zero aligned offsetting portfolio showing the move from projects based on emissions reductions (yellow) toward carbon removal (blue).Source: The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting (revised 2024)

There are a few simple reasons for the importance of emission reductions today:

• Deforestation and forest degradation continue to represent 12-20% of total emissions. Methane leaks account for 12% of all U.S. emissions and approximately one-third of global warming to date. As these examples and many others show, we still have a lot of emissions to reduce and avoid.
• Habitat loss is greatly contributing to the Sixth Mass Extinction Nearly half of all species are in decline and current extinction rates are 1,000 – 10,000 times higher than expected background rates. Reducing deforestation protects habitat, and improves water quality, soil health, and the livelihoods of those dependent on these resources.
• Now is better than later. We can avoid emissions now, with immediate benefit to the climate. Removals take longer to have an effect, whether you are talking about planting trees – which take time to grow – or investing in a new technology that has yet to reach global scale.
• Protecting and improving management of existing ecosystems is more cost-effective than creating new ones. With limited time and resources, we ought to invest where our climate impact goes furthest.

At ACR, we understand the need for a diverse portfolio of strategies, which is why we develop and maintain methodologies to reduce and remove emissions from industrial sources, AFOLU (forestry, grasslands and wetlands), carbon capture and storage, and waste handling and disposal. We believe all of these approaches are necessary.

The ACR registry was also the first to distinguish verified carbon removal credits from emission reduction credits, promoting transparency in the marketplace. ACR’s improved forest management methodologies can generate both removals and reductions credits. Our afforestation and reforestation methodology focuses on removals. And our active conservation and sustainable management methodology generates both, with an emphasis on reduction credits.

We understand the importance of both removals and reductions.

A simple “either/or” approach rarely captures real-world dynamics. We need “both/and,” especially when confronted with the stark reality of the climate crisis. We need nature and technology; voluntary and compliance markets; regulations and incentives. And we definitely need reductions and removals.

A focus on solely removals misses the moment and devalues the critical action we know is needed right now to keep emissions out of the atmosphere.

Instead, credit buyers should consider a portfolio approach that balances the strengths of different strategies to achieve long-term climate stability.

Andrew Taylor is Senior Technical Manager, Forestry at ACR.

Download this article as a PDF here. 

ACR Welcomes Mary Jane Coombs to Industrial Programs Team

To expand ACR’s capacity and continue providing excellent customer service, the ACR Industrial Solutions team added Mary Jane Coombs earlier this spring as Director of Industrial Programs.

Mary Jane comes to ACR after over 15 years at the California Air Resources Board (CARB), where she oversaw implementation of CARB’s methane emissions reduction programs for landfills and livestock, as well as electricity-related greenhouse gas emissions reduction programs. Prior to that, she managed allowance allocation, emissions leakage protection, and electricity policy for California’s Cap-and-Trade Program (also at CARB).

Mary Jane has advised jurisdictions around the world on cap-and-trade program design. Before CARB, she was a project manager for the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, which characterized geological and terrestrial sequestration opportunities in the western United States. She also worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, editing and co-authoring papers on mineral resources.

Mary Jane has a Bachelor of Arts in Geology & Environmental Studies from Whitman College and a Master of Science in Marine Science (studies in paleoclimatology) from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The ACR team is thrilled to welcome her aboard.