Gold Standard carbon credits

What Gold Standard certification means

Gold Standard was set up in 2003 by WWF and other international NGOs to raise the bar for carbon projects. Under Gold Standard for the Global Goals, a project must reduce or remove greenhouse gases and also deliver verified contributions to at least three UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as health, clean energy or decent work.

Every project is validated before it starts and verified while it runs by an independent auditor approved by Gold Standard. Each certified reduction becomes one Verified Emission Reduction, a credit representing one tonne of CO₂e, issued and tracked on the Gold Standard Impact Registry.

How to check a project in the registry

Every project page on this marketplace shows the project’s Gold Standard ID. Search for it on the Impact Registry to see the project design document, monitoring reports, the credits issued for each vintage and every retirement.

• Confirm the project status is certified and that credits have been issued for the vintage you are buying.
• Read the latest monitoring report to see how the reductions were measured.
• After you buy, look up the retirement: it names the beneficiary and the serial numbers, which is your proof against double counting.

Project types you will find here

Gold Standard is strongest in community projects: efficient cookstoves, safe drinking water, household biogas, and small renewable energy schemes. It also certifies afforestation and reforestation projects and some agricultural and land-use activities. The pills above the projects filter the marketplace to what is available right now.

What affects the price

Project type has the biggest effect: community projects with strong health and social benefits cost more than large renewable energy schemes. Newer vintages, smaller supply, additional labels such as the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles, and the volume you buy all move the price. Marketplace prices exclude VAT and include registry retirement, your certificate and payment fees. Applicable VAT is added at checkout. Sign in to see live prices.

Retirement and your certificate

Buying a credit does not by itself claim its benefit. The credit must be retired, which permanently removes it from circulation on the registry. When you pay, we retire the credits on the Gold Standard Impact Registry in your name and issue a certificate immediately. Carbon Footprint Ltd is audited annually against the Quality Assurance Standard to confirm every sale is matched by a retirement.

Certification versus our CRISP rating

The Carbon Marketplace sources certified credits from projects. When you purchase through our marketplace, we retire the credits on the registry in your name, or your organisation’s name, and issue your certificate straight away. The certification tells you the project meets the standard’s rules. Our separate CRISP rating tells you how strong the evidence is for that particular project.

How to read the CRISP rating

CRISP, the Carbon Ratings Insight Platform, reviews each project’s design document, verification and monitoring reports, scores five criteria out of 5 with a written justification for each, and averages them into the overall rating you see on every project card. More than 1,800 projects are rated and the ratings are free to read.

• Additionality: would the reductions have happened anyway? CRISP looks for regulatory surplus, financial need for the credit revenue, activities that are not common practice, and a credible baseline.
• Permanence: how long the benefit lasts and how reversal risk is managed, through monitoring, buffer pools or insurance and long-term project commitments.
• Quantification: whether the reductions are measured with robust methods, a clear baseline, systematic monitoring, independent verification and transparent reporting.
• Leakage: whether emissions simply shift outside the project boundary, and whether that is monitored and deducted from the credits.
• ICVCM CCP status: 1 if the methodology has not been submitted or failed assessment, 3 if submitted and pending, 5 if approved under the Core Carbon Principles.