Verified Carbon Standard

The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), formerly the Voluntary Carbon Standard, is a standard for certifying carbon credits to offset emissions. VCS is administered by Verra, a 501(c)(3) organization. Verra is a certifier of voluntary carbon offsets. As of 2024, more than 2,300 projects were registered under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), spanning various sectors such as AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use), energy, transport, waste, manufacturing industries, and others. These projects have collectively issued over 1.3 billion credits, with more than 776 million credits retired to date.

There are also specific methodologies for REDD+ projects. Verra is a program of choice for most of the forest credits in the voluntary market, and almost all REDD+ projects.

Verra was developed in 2005 when the company Climate Wedge and its partner Cheyne Capital designed and drafted the first version (version 1.0) of the Voluntary Carbon Standard. This standard was intended as a quality standard for transacting and developing "non-Kyoto" Protocol carbon credits. Climate Wedge was at the time active as a carbon markets investment advisory firm.

There are controversies around this standard and how it is implemented. In 2023, an investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial (a non-profit investigative journalism outlet) found that about 94% of the rainforest carbon offsets certified by Verra are worthless. The investigation even found that the standard may in fact worsen climate change: "Investigation into Verra carbon standard finds most are ‘phantom credits’ and may worsen global heating". In May 2023, following months of criticism towards Verra in its handling of carbon-offsetting, CEO David Antonioli resigned.

In June 2024, three carbon credit projects were suspended in the Brazilian Amazon after the police raids targeting Verra certified projects linked to a land-grabbing and illegal logging scam.