ACR Welcomes U.S. Government’s Approach to Advancing High-Integrity Voluntary Carbon Market

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PUBLISHED

May 29, 2024

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/.