Carbon Planet IFM-LtPF Methodology Approved

After almost 2 years of work, and 7 PhDs amongst others working on it, the company I work for, Carbon Planet has just received final approval for a carbon accounting methodology that calculates the emissions saved by protecting a tropical rainforest from logging.

This is a really big deal.

Currently, under the Kyoto Protocol, not many kinds of forestry projects actually count towards generating carbon credits that can be used to offset greenhouse gas emissions. Only reforestation and afforestation projects are covered. That has meant that there was little incentive for anyone in the developing world to stop logging their forests.

The only way to generate carbon credits from something like preventing selective logging in a tropical rainforest is to set up a project that is accredited via what’s known as the voluntary carbon market. Major organisations like the Verified Carbon Standard Association (VCSA) approve and administer emissions reduction projects that generate carbon credits for the voluntary markets in sectors not covered by Kyoto. The catch is, up until recently, there was no approved method of calculating the emissions reductions from stopping logging and protecting a forest. And it turns out that it’s actually fairly complicated. So complicated that it took us a couple of years of work, with two rounds of verification by external auditors expert in forestry greenhouse gas emissions, to figure it all out.

But now we have, and all 111 pages of the final product, complete with more than one hundred equations, can be found on the VCS website for all the world to see (and use).

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Image credits: Carbon Planet Limited and Verified Carbon Standard