This week, the Carbon Business Council published an issue brief on Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) for carbon dioxide removal (CDR).
In the context of CDR, MRV is the process that refers to accounting for, communicating and certifying the total amount of carbon removed by a project over time.
This usually also includes the project’s total amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
By releasing this issue brief, the Carbon Business Council is joining in a global call for better, clearer MRV standards for CDR, without which buyers of carbon removal credits cannot have the confidence that their purchase is indeed contributing to helping reach climate objectives by counterbalancing residual CO2 emissions.
Hence, reliable and independent MRV standards are the basis for building the trust necessary for scaling deployment of different CDR solutions.
According to the issue brief, some of the main challenges in developing MRV standards is their complexity and multifaceted nature, which among other things, many now agree must also now include a project’s non-GHG-related environmental impact.
Another challenge is that MRV cannot be “one-size-fits-all,” considering how drastically the many available CDR pathways may differ from one another.
The issue brief sees these challenges and the call to address them as a unique opportunity for all stakeholders in the CDR sector, whether public, private or non-government bodies, to actively participate in the conversation around MRV.
This conversation touches not only on how MRV standards ought to be developed and what they should consist of, but also how these standards should be administered.
In conclusion, the Carbon Business Council offers its recommendations that also align with Carbon180’s “Framework for High-Accountability MRV” idea that in addition to a project’s deliver of carbon removals, the MRV standards should also incorporate its potential co-benefits and harms to the environment.
Lastly, the issue brief stresses the need for the public sector to boost funding for ‘research, sampling, and modeling work necessary to establish criteria for high-quality MRV’.
Read more: Carbon180 Issues Policy Recommendations On Ocean Carbon Removal
