Climate Impact Partners comments on IC-VCM rejecting Renewable Energy Methodologies

On 6 August 2024, the IC-VCM announced that its Core Carbon Principles (CCP) label cannot be used on credits issued under eight existing renewable energy methodologies.

Kelly Fitzwater, Head of Global Supply Chain at Climate Impact Partners, shares her thoughts on this. 

“We do not want this latest announcement to see purchasers of carbon credits move away from channelling finance to renewable energy projects in places where it is needed and where the additionality argument is clear.

While in many parts of the world technology is scaling renewable energy projects to a stage where they do not need carbon finance, there are still developing economies where the technology and energy infrastructures have not yet evolved to this level.

Under these circumstances, carbon finance has an important role to play in delivering and scaling renewable energy projects. At the point where it makes commercial sense to invest in renewable energy rather than fossil fuels, carbon finance is no longer needed, it has served its purpose.

We are already seeing (prior to the IC-VCM's announcement) carbon finance methodologies developing in line with this, phasing renewable energy methodologies out when they are no longer additional.

The IC-VCM has a vital role to play in helping to deliver quality across the market but is also one of many frameworks, meaning that CCP labelled credits will not be the right credits for everyone. Reviewing at a methodology level is important and this is the approach taken by the IC-VCM. Our role is to go one level deeper and explore project-by-project granularity to assess the impact and effectiveness of those projects."