ECSI Blog

The news is full of talk about global warming and climate change.  State and regional regulatory initiatives are underway and a new administration has expressed a commitment to control and reduce emissions that contributes to climate change.  

Over the last year ECSI has been working with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as lead auditors in their emerging GHG Validation and Verification body accreditation program.  The relationship has placed us in a unique position to observe the development of this and other GHG programs first hand.   This article is a high level overview of the efforts underway in North America to standardize GHG emission inventory and offset projects.

With in the last two years The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has issued 4 standards addressing GHG emissions. Three of these (ISO 14064-1, ISO 14064-2 and ISO 14064-3 address how organizations should approach the development of GHG inventories and emission reduction projects and how organizations verifying and validating the accuracy of these inventories and reductions should proceed with these verification activities.  The 4th standard published by ISO is 14065 which describes how organizations like ANSI should go about the work of accrediting the VV bodies who are doing the work outlined in ISO 14064-3.  The relationship between ANSI and the VV’s is similar to that between ISO 14001 registrars and the ANAB (see the related article in this issue ISO 14001 Registration – How it Works). 

The purpose of the ANSI accreditation program is to provide a high level of confidence for interested parties that the claims being made by organizations about their GHG emission are accurate.  This is particularly important for organizations contemplating the purchase of GHG offsets from carbon credit brokers like the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) or the Voluntary Carbon Standard.  Potential purchasers want to know that the offsets they are purchasing are legitimate.  The VV bodies have the responsibility to ensure that the credits are legitimate and ANSI has the responsibility for ensuring the VV bodies are performing their work competently and in the absence of a potential conflict of interest.

ANSI began their accreditation program in 2008 through execution of a pilot project which to date has accredited 8 VV bodies ANSI is in the process of accrediting another 29 bodies that have submitted applications for accreditation.   Each VV body is accredited to ISO 14065 and to any of 4 GHG programs.  The 4 programs are The Climate Registry (TCR), Climate Action Reserve (CAR), Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS).  Each VV can also be accredited for several project protocols under each of the programs.  Project protocol include things link Landfill Gas Combustion, Forest Sector, Livestock (methane), and Coal Mine Methane to name just a few.  At this writing ANSI recognized 34 of these protocol for potential verification.

At a recent 3 day auditor training secession in Orlando presented by ANSI representatives from each of the 4 GHG programs (TCR, CAR,CCX and VCS) provided an in depth review of their programs.  Part of the discussion centered on the future of GHG inventories, projects and programs.  The general consensus of the various programs was that although consolidation of the VV bodies and the GHG Programs is expected in the future the market for VV services is expected to continue to grow as more organizations seek to validate or verify there GHG emission claims.  The reason for seeking VV services is for both marketing purposes and in preparation for potential regulation of these emissions.  Future articles in this series will discuss things organizations who want to examine their GHG emissions should know to help them optimize their GHG inventory and project efforts.