Senseible

What changed in Verra VM0044 v1.2 for biochar additionality?

Version 1.2, active since 27 June 2025, adds a third additionality step. A biochar project must still show regulatory surplus and meet the positive list, and now must also pass an investment analysis under Verra's VT0008 tool, by investment comparison or benchmark analysis. Fail it and the project cannot be credited.

The three steps now

  1. Regulatory surplus, as the VCS Standard defines it.
  2. Positive list: the project meets every applicability condition of the methodology. The list rests on Verra's finding that waste biomass turned into biochar is 5% or less of the waste biomass available worldwide.
  3. Investment analysis under VT0008: either an investment comparison (Option 1) or a benchmark analysis (Option 2).

What to prepare

Have capital cost, operating cost and revenue figures ready, each with its source document, before validation starts. The verifier tests the analysis, so numbers from quotes, invoices and contracts hold up better than estimates.

Moving from v1.1

Projects that wanted to register under v1.1 had to request listing on the Verra Registry before 27 June 2025 and complete validation by 27 December 2025. New projects use v1.2.

The ICVCM has approved v1.2 as meeting its Core Carbon Principles. A project that wants the CCP label on its credits attaches the completed CCP eligibility checklist to its verification report.

What comes next

Verra's draft v2.0 of July 2026 would drop the positive list. Additionality would rest on regulatory surplus, investment analysis and a common practice test. It is still a draft.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads the fuel, power and freight invoices behind a biochar project's costs and project emissions, so the figures in the investment analysis and the monitoring report come from the same documents.

Sources: Verra, VM0044 Biochar Utilization in Soil and Non-Soil Applications, v1.2 (active since 27 June 2025), methodology page, Verra, VM0044 v1.2 methodology document: applicability conditions 9 to 14, Section 7 (additionality), Tables 3 and 4, Section 9 (monitoring)

Last reviewed 2026-11-02.