What must a carbon crediting methodology contain under the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) rules, and can a program pull one back?

A methodology or the program rules must cover six things: eligibility, accounting boundary, additionality, baseline, quantification and monitoring. New or majorly revised ones need independent expert review and public consultation, and the program shall have procedures to suspend or withdraw one when evidence shows over-estimation.

Six essential components

1. Applicability or eligibility criteria.
2. Determination of the accounting boundary.
3. Determination of additionality, to the extent it is not covered in other general program provisions.
4. Establishing the baseline scenario.
5. Quantification of greenhouse gas emission reductions or removals.
6. Monitoring practices.

Review before approval

The program shall require that, before approval, new methodologies and major revisions of existing ones undergo review by a group of independent experts and a public stakeholder consultation. It shall also have a process for developing and adopting updates to existing methodologies.

Withdrawal

The program shall have procedures to review, suspend and/or withdraw the use of a methodology where it has determined, based on evidence, that emission reductions or removals are being overestimated or that additionality might not be ensured.

A review cycle the framework says is coming

The framework says programs should regularly review and update their methodologies, and that a later version will include a minimum elapsed time, for example every five years. That is a stated intention, not a current requirement.

What to do with this

• Before you build a project on a methodology, note its version number and the date you started.
• Our reading: because a method can be suspended or withdrawn on evidence, ask the program what happens to a project already registered under it. The framework text above does not answer that.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, which gives a project its own fuel and power history. Credits are issued by the program's registry and checked by an independent verifier, not by Senseible's own check.

• Carbon Credit Trading Scheme approved offset methodologies
• If Verra retires a methodology version mid-period
• Baseline and additionality tool
• Carbon credits for Indian businesses

Sources: Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, Core Carbon Principles Assessment Framework, Section 4, January 2024, version 1.1 (criterion 5.1 and table 5.4)

Last reviewed 2026-11-05. Based on Assessment Framework version 1.1 (January 2024). The Integrity Council's August 2026 rule architecture says Interpretations and Technical Notices may affect how criteria are assessed, so check icvcm.org for any in effect before you rely on a detail.