Frequently Asked
Questions

A voluntary carbon market is a system that allows individuals, organizations, and companies to purchase and trade carbon credits voluntarily to offset their carbon footprint and support climate change mitigation efforts.

In the voluntary carbon market, organizations can purchase carbon credits from projects that have been certified to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These credits represent one tonne of CO2 equivalent, which can be used to offset an equivalent amount of emissions. Companies or individuals can then retire these credits to claim carbon neutrality or carbon neutrality for specific products, services, or operations.

Carbon credits are a tradable commodity representing a reduction or removal of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. One carbon credit is equivalent to one metric tonne of CO2 or other greenhouse gases.

Projects that generate carbon credits can include renewable energy projects, energy efficiency projects, and forest conservation and reforestation projects, among others. These projects are rigorously verified and monitored to ensure their emissions reductions are real, additional, measurable, permanent, and verifiable.

By purchasing carbon credits from voluntary carbon markets, companies and individuals can demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and take action to reduce their carbon footprint. Additionally, participating in the voluntary carbon market can support the development of climate change mitigation projects around the world.

The price of carbon credits is determined by supply and demand. Prices can vary depending on the project type, location, and certification standard.

There are several certification standards used in the voluntary carbon market, including the Regenerative Standard, Gold Standard, Verified Carbon Standard, and Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standards. These standards ensure the credibility of the carbon credits generated from the projects.

Carbon credits are not regulated, but they are subject to certification standards and voluntary codes of conduct to ensure their integrity and credibility.

The Regenerative Standard is governed by Applied Ecological Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Our vision is to understand the needs of land stewards by providing straightforward protocols that are backed by science to incentivize and scale regenerative land management and restoration practices that create carbon drawdown offsets, provide reliable, defensible soil carbon storage, and deliver benefits beyond carbon. The Regenerative Standard works closely with the Regenerative Registry which certifies the high-quality, measured carbon drawdown offsets with the utmost transparency and auditability.

Carbon is naturally stored in soils over time, where it nourishes plants, including grasses, trees, and other crops. Over the past couple of centuries, agriculture and land-use change have depleted soil carbon globally and in the United States. U.S. agricultural soils alone can sequester up to 10% of domestic greenhouse gases. The Regenerative Standard was created to help farmers, ranchers, and conservationists of rangeland, grassland, agricultural and conservation lands, in addition to carbon project developers, overcome barriers to adopting better soil carbon practices through robust, scientifically-informed support. The Regenerative Standard is designed to:

1. Describe how carbon drawdown credits can be generated through nature-based, atmospheric carbon drawdown and reliable, soil carbon storage
2. Guarantee delivery of high-quality, carbon removal credits, based on rigorous soil sampling, laboratory analysis, and independent, 3rd-party verification
3. Make it easier to initiate and participate in soil carbon storage project opportunities by removing typical participation barriers

Any project must demonstrate additionality and document one of two options. Option One is based on Verra’s traditional definition of additionality. Option Two is based on BCarbon’s definition of additionality and is more applicable to the land use of agriculture and grazing transitioning to regenerative and restorative practices.  Absent a climate-smart agriculture data set that includes a comprehensive mix of specific soil types, climate and locational contexts, practice types, and crop types, the Regenerative Standard’s approach to carbon credits simply incentivizes land stewards to go above and beyond their current practices to support measured outcomes.

The Standard allows a more pragmatic, but shorter carbon storage permanence term of at least 10 years after each issuance of carbon credits. For example, if a land steward enrolls in carbon projects with contractual participation of at least 5 years, the total project permanence is at least 15 years (5 years of accrual + 10 years of storage). Permanence terms could be longer if the project developer enrolls land stewards with a longer contractual term. All project developers are required to document the project permanence term with the Registry.

Under the Regenerative Standard, no offset credit is currently awarded for reductions in GHGs associated with reduced agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, reduced usage of powered farm equipment, or reduced emissions from livestock or manure operations. This makes this Standard inherently conservative in terms of the number of credits issued. For reasonable and sufficient assurance that carbon pools and GHG emissions are not changing for the project scenario, the project proponent is required to determine, at a minimum, the likelihood of the project activities leading to an increase in GHG emissions either within the project area or outside the project area based on consideration of the most important GHG emissions related to operations in agricultural, grazing and conservation lands.

The Regenerative Standard currently only quantifies carbon removal (drawdown) credits.Most soil carbon protocols credit some combination of carbon removal and avoided emissions, including CO₂ emissions unrelated to soil carbon (e.g. tractor use), and in some cases other greenhouse gases like N₂O and CH₄ that result from fertilizer use, grazing animals, or anaerobic decomposition.No protocols track carbon removal and avoided emissions separately, so buyers looking to focus exclusively on carbon removal must decipher this distinction themselves.To help make this distinction explicit, the Regenerative Standard currently applies only to carbon removal credits and does not include any benefits from “avoided emissions” credits.

The Regenerative Registry is a separate entity from the Regenerative Standard and is the only current registry supporting credits from the Regenerative Standard. The Regenerative Registry requires independent, 3rd-party verification to certify and issue credits. Visit www.regenerativeregistry.org for more details.

There is no fee to use the Regenerative Standard per se. It only provides a process for land stewards and project developers to use regenerative land management and restoration practices to create carbon drawdown credits and ecological co-benefits through nature-based solutions that provide reliable, quantifiable, and durable results. There are, however, transaction fees for the issuance and registration of carbon and other ecosystem credits generated from the Regenerative Standard.

To comment and contribute to the current and future versions of the Regenerative Standard, visit www.regenerativestandard.org/contact.

There are no restrictions on who may comment during public review periods. We hold a 30-day public review and comment period during the development process for each of our protocols. We distribute the notice of the public review period to the newsletter distribution list and account holders. During the public review period, we also hold an in-person or virtual public workshop with conference call and webcast capabilities. Click here to add your email address to our distribution list.

The Standard uses an intensive, multi-stakeholder process to develop its standardized project protocols. Developing a new protocol generally takes 9 to 12 months from start to finish. Once the development process is initiated with the formation of a workgroup, the protocol in development will have its own webpage with additional information on timeline, workgroups, contact information, background resources, contribution opportunities, etc.