Carbon credits have the potential to mobilize large amounts of funding to climate solutions that otherwise would not find the support needed to scale. However, most credit purchasing happens behind closed doors, with considerable reliance on private RFPs and customized due diligence, those offering the market little visibility into how decisions are made or what buyers truly value. Buyers, in particular, find these processes inefficient and largely duplicative, since RFPs often seek very similar information but ask for it in slightly different ways, formats, and levels of detail.

RMI and the Beyond Alliance partnered to create an open-source Template for Carbon Credit Procurement (TCCP). This standardized and digitized template is designed to make carbon credit purchases, particularly RFPs, more efficient, transparent, and accessible.

This template covers the 80% of questions that are applicable to all project types – and brings them to a standardized set of formats, specificity, and applicability to the decision stage. To help new buyers incorporate this into their internal processes, we have included guidance on how each section informs a diligence decision. We are releasing an analog and digital format, below.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to multiple organizations across the carbon market ecosystem for offering their guidance and expertise during the duration of this project. Special thanks to members of the Beyond Alliance, who contributed time, resources, and trust to ensure this application was truly representative of market demand and current best practices. Additionally, we would like to specifically acknowledge Tyler Marcus of GBB Strategy, Ratnika Prassad of Symbiosis Coalition, Anton Root of Allied Offsets, Lauren Wilkenson and Sara De Peri of Southpole, Anastasia O’Rourke of Carbon Containment Lab and Yale University, Anna Stablum and Trevor Mueller of ClimeCo, Maddi Erdall of Centigrade, Scott Hernandez of Xpansiv, Jason Grillo of SPECTRA Super Pollutant Elimination Alliance, and the teams at GCMU and Emergent for lending time and expertise during the review process. This work is made stronger by the above participants and a number of additional reviewers.

This project would not have been possible without support from the Ripple Impact Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.