At a glance
- Credits are based on carbon expected to stay stored for at least 200 years, and avoided emissions from other uses of the biomass are excluded.
- PARC splits producers into three monitoring tracks while applying the same eligibility, durability and net-accounting rules across all projects.
- For fund selectors and allocators buying removal credits, the methodology supplies a 200-year durability number to hold against a seller's own claims.
Gold Standard published PARC, its first methodology for carbon removal credits from biochar, on Nov. 6. Credits are based on carbon expected to stay stored for at least 200 years, and avoided emissions from other uses of the biomass are excluded. Registration timing was not disclosed.
PARC splits producers into three monitoring tracks while applying the same eligibility, durability and net-accounting rules across all projects. Biochar is a carbon-rich material made by heating biomass with little oxygen. The split lets smaller and distributed producers join under the same integrity rules as industrial facilities, ESG News reported.
For fund selectors and allocators buying removal credits, the methodology supplies a 200-year durability number to hold against a seller's own claims. A 1,000-year durability claim is allowed only with extra analysis of the biochar's carbon structure. Before issuance, PARC deducts emissions from biomass supply, production, transport and application, plus leakage and uncertainty. No credits are issued for a monitoring period below the five-to-one storage threshold, and projects must pay into a buffer or take an upfront risk deduction of at least 2.5%.
Feedstock must be genuinely surplus, with non-diversion safeguards across six feedstock categories. Landfill disposal and the use of biochar as fuel are excluded. PARC follows the baseline approach in the Article 6.4 Rules, Modalities and Procedures, and Gold Standard applies its Paris Agreement-aligned downward adjustment factor when it issues credits.
Gold Standard's registry work sits alongside its Article 6 bookkeeping, as this publication previously reported in August: Verra and Gold Standard combined their Article 6.2 accounting into a joint tool giving host countries a single record of authorized credits. PARC's reliance on the Article 6.4 baseline approach ties issuance under the methodology to that same accounting architecture, which is where buyers of credits tied to national commitments will look for double-counting risk.
Reported by the Transition Finance desk from ESG News. Published . Corrections