The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) published its Core Carbon Principles in July 2023 — ten threshold requirements that a carbon credit must satisfy before it can be considered credible. They are the most rigorous, widely adopted definition of credit quality in the voluntary carbon market, and they form the primary filter applied to every project in the 360° Impact Portfolio. Understanding them is essential for any organisation making a contribution claim that will be seen by an auditor.
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market is an independent governance body established in 2021 in response to a fundamental problem: the voluntary carbon market had grown rapidly without a consistent, enforceable definition of what a high-integrity credit actually was. Different standards bodies applied different criteria. Verification quality varied. Some categories of credit — particularly certain REDD+ avoided-deforestation projects — came under sustained criticism for over-crediting. Buyers making public contribution claims faced growing exposure to reputational and legal challenge.
The CCPs are the ICVCM’s response. Published in July 2023 alongside the full Assessment Framework, they establish ten threshold requirements that a carbon crediting programme must satisfy before the credits it issues can carry the CCP label. Crucially, the assessment operates at programme level — the ICVCM evaluates the governance, methodology, and verification standards of the crediting programme itself, not individual projects. This provides buyers with a scalable, auditable quality signal without requiring independent project-by-project due diligence on every credit procured.
The CCPs are explicitly referenced as the due diligence standard in the VCMI Claims Code of Practice, in ISO 14068-1 §11.2 and §11.3, and in the SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard v2.0 consultation draft. CORSIA’s emissions unit eligibility criteria are substantively aligned with them. For a UK sustainability manager reporting under SECR and seeking to make a carbon neutrality claim under ISO 14068-1, the CCPs are the single most important quality framework to understand.
The first four CCPs establish the institutional standards a crediting programme must meet before any credit it issues can be considered credible. They address how the programme is governed, how credits are tracked, how information is disclosed, and how verification is conducted.
CCP 1 — Effective Governance
The crediting programme must have robust governance arrangements with clear accountability, transparent decision-making, and documented rules and procedures that are publicly available. This ensures that the programme is not subject to capture by commercial interests and that its standards can be independently scrutinised. For buyers, this is the foundational assurance that the programme issuing the credit is institutionally sound.
CCP 2 — Tracking
Every credit must be listed in a public registry with transparent, traceable information on ownership and status — unsold, transferred, or retired. Credits must carry unique serial numbers and be permanently retired, with clear traceability back to the generating project. The registry must have measures in place to prevent double issuance and double use. This is the technical foundation of the non-double-counting guarantee.
CCP 3 — Transparency
The programme must make publicly available all material information about its project cycle: registration requirements, verification procedures, methodology documentation, project-level data, and proof of credit retirement. For a sustainability manager responding to an auditor’s due diligence request, this is the principle that determines whether your evidence trail is publicly verifiable. If the programme does not publish the relevant documentation, the credit cannot be independently substantiated.
CCP 4 — Robust Independent Third-Party Validation and Verification
Credits must be validated and verified by accredited, independent third parties. Validation confirms the project was designed and implemented according to the approved methodology. Verification confirms that the emissions reductions or removals actually occurred and were accurately measured. The programme must have in place accreditation requirements for validators and verifiers, oversight mechanisms, and provisions for reviewing verifier performance. This is the principle most directly analogous to the external audit function your finance team will already recognise.
The emissions impact principles are the technical core of the CCPs. They define the conditions under which a carbon credit genuinely represents a tonne of CO₂e that would not have been avoided or removed without the project. These are the principles your assurance team will focus on.
CCP 5 — Additionality
The emissions reduction or removal must be additional — it would not have occurred without the revenue generated by selling carbon credits. This means the project cannot be financially viable without carbon finance, cannot be legally mandated by regulation, and cannot represent business-as-usual activity. The additionality assessment must use a robust, publicly documented methodology that an independent third party has reviewed. This is the principle most frequently cited in criticism of low-quality credits: where additionality is weak or assumed rather than demonstrated, the tonne has no genuine climate value.
CCP 6 — Permanence
The emissions reduction or removal must be permanent, or the crediting programme must have adequate safeguards to manage the risk of reversal and guarantee equivalent delivery if a reversal occurs. For avoidance projects, permanence means the avoided emission stays avoided. For removal projects — forestry, soil carbon, blue carbon — it means the stored carbon remains stored. Acceptable safeguard mechanisms include buffer pools, contractual make-good obligations, and insurance solutions. Permanence is why forest projects require more rigorous scrutiny than, for example, renewable energy projects: the risk profile is fundamentally different.
CCP 7 — Robust Quantification
Emissions reductions and removals must be calculated using approved, transparent, conservative methodologies. The baseline — the counterfactual emissions level without the project — must be credible, defensible, and publicly disclosed. Monitoring data must be independently verifiable. Credits may only be issued ex-post: after the emissions reduction or removal has actually occurred and been verified. This is the principle that prohibits forward-crediting, which has been a source of significant market integrity problems. Your disclosure pack will include the methodology reference and vintage year for every credit retired.
CCP 8 — No Double Counting
The same tonne of emissions reduction or removal may not be claimed more than once. This operates at three levels: no double issuance (one tonne, one credit), no double use (a retired credit cannot be transferred or re-used), and no double claiming (the same reduction cannot be counted by both the buyer and the host country government towards its nationally determined contribution). The third dimension — host country double counting — is the one that has become increasingly material as NDC accounting has matured, and is the precise issue that corresponding adjustments under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement are designed to resolve.
The final two CCPs move beyond climate integrity to address the broader impact of crediting programmes on people, ecosystems, and the transition to net zero. They are the basis for the SDG contribution narrative in the 360° Impact Portfolio.
CCP 9 — Sustainable Development Benefits and Safeguards
Crediting programmes must identify the Sustainable Development Goals to which each project contributes and must have in place safeguards to avoid adverse impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, communities, human rights, and local economies. Safeguards must address Free, Prior and Informed Consent of affected communities. SDG co-benefits may be included in project descriptions and are a legitimate element of a contribution narrative. This is the CCP that underpins the difference between the 360° Impact Portfolio and Carbon Essentials: both meet the same credit quality threshold, but only the multi-project portfolio is selected with SDG co-benefit breadth as a criterion alongside climate integrity.
CCP 10 — Contribution to Net Zero Transition
Crediting programmes must not create disincentives for host country governments, project developers, or credit buyers to pursue their own emissions reduction obligations. Credits should support, not substitute for, the transition to net zero. This CCP is the programmatic-level equivalent of the claim framing requirement in the VCMI Claims Code: contribution claims are additive to a reduction strategy, never a replacement for one. For SECR reporters, this means the credits you procure should sit alongside your scope 1, 2, and 3 reduction plan — not in place of it.
The CCPs represent the most rigorous and widely adopted definition of credit quality currently available. They do not resolve every question a diligent buyer needs to answer.
Whether a specific project — assessed under a CCP-Approved programme — satisfies the additionality principle in a particular context involves judgement. The crediting programme has assessed its own methodology, and the ICVCM has assessed the programme. But additionality is not a binary test: it is a probabilistic assessment of a counterfactual. Reasonable, informed practitioners can disagree on the margin. The same applies to baseline credibility, permanence risk for land-based projects, and leakage quantification. CCP-Approved status provides a strong and publicly defensible basis for a due diligence position — it does not eliminate the need for a due diligence position.
The CCPs also do not address claim quality. They tell you whether a credit is real. They do not tell you what you may say publicly about having purchased it. For that, you need the VCMI Claims Code. They do not tell you how to structure your disclosure document for ISO 14068-1 purposes. They do not tell you whether the credits you have procured are CORSIA-eligible. And they do not yet resolve the corresponding adjustments question for voluntary buyers outside the aviation sector.
Navigating the relationship between seven overlapping frameworks — each developed by a different governance body, for a different primary audience, addressing a different slice of the same problem — is the material challenge facing a sustainability manager attempting to make a credible, auditor-ready contribution claim. The sourcing process and disclosure documentation provided with every 360° Impact Portfolio transaction is designed to address all seven frameworks simultaneously, so that the sustainability team receives a complete evidence pack rather than a starting point for further research. See how all seven frameworks compare →
The sourcing process applied to every project in the 360° Impact Portfolio is structured with reference to all ten CCPs. The following is a summary of the process positions; the full methodology is available separately.
Credits are only sourced from Gold Standard and Verra-registered projects. Both programmes hold CCP-Approved status, satisfying the governance, tracking, transparency, and verification requirements at programme level.
Project documentation is reviewed with reference to the additionality methodology applied. Projects are assessed as to whether the additionality case is robust, conservative, and independently verified. This involves judgement; positions are documented.
Permanence risk is assessed by project type. All credits are ex-post. Methodology references and vintage years are recorded and included in the client disclosure pack. Buffer pool or equivalent safeguard documentation is retained for land-based projects.
Credits are retired in the client’s name on the relevant registry. Serial numbers are recorded. An Article 6 double-counting analysis is included in every disclosure pack. SDG mapping and safeguards documentation are sourced from the project’s registry record.
The model disclosure opposite demonstrates how the ICVCM CCP reference is incorporated into a contribution claim structured to ISO 14068-1 §11.3(h). The CCP reference provides the auditor with a named, publicly available standard against which credit quality was assessed.
Names the quality standard
Citing the CCPs in the claim gives the auditor a specific, publicly documented framework to reference rather than a general quality assertion.
Serial numbers and retirement proof
The retirement certificate linked in the disclosure pack provides independently verifiable evidence that the specific credits named have been permanently cancelled.
Contribution, not neutralisation
The claim is framed as a contribution to climate action beyond the value chain — additive to the reduction strategy, not a substitute for it.
Model disclosure for illustrative purposes only. Exact wording should be reviewed against the organisation’s VCMI tier alignment and legal sign-off requirements before publication.
The CCPs address credit quality. Six other frameworks address claim quality, disclosure structure, compliance obligations, and the transition to net zero. Each is documented separately.
Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative
Governs what an organisation may say publicly about its carbon contribution. Defines Silver, Gold, and Platinum claim tiers by reference to tonnage purchased relative to residual emissions. Requires CCP-aligned due diligence as a precondition for any claim.
International Organization for Standardization
The international carbon neutrality standard. Section 11 defines criteria for carbon credits used in neutrality claims, including ex-post requirement, vintage limits, and full documentation requirements. The disclosure pack is structured to §11.3(h).
UK Government · SECR Guidance
The UK government’s criteria for carbon offsets used in SECR reporting. Seven criteria: additionality, leakage, permanence, validation, timing, double counting, and transparency. Directly aligned with the emissions impact CCPs.
International Civil Aviation Organization
The compliance offsetting scheme for international aviation. Eligibility criteria are substantively aligned with the CCPs. Requires corresponding adjustments for eligible credits from 2024 onwards. Relevant to aviation-sector clients and the Sovereign Portfolio.
Science Based Targets initiative · Consultation draft Nov 2025
Defines integrity principles for mitigation impact contributions under the emerging SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard. Nine principles covering issuance, quantification, additionality, verification, and safeguards. Aligned with CCPs; does not require corresponding adjustments.
University of Oxford · Smith School
Four science-based principles governing net zero-aligned carbon offsetting. Addresses credit quality, portfolio composition, storage durability, and the development of the durable removals market. Referenced by VCMI, SBTi, and ISO.
Every credit in the 360° Impact Portfolio is sourced from CCP-Approved programmes. Every transaction comes with a disclosure pack structured to address the CCPs, the VCMI Claims Code, ISO 14068-1, and DEFRA Good Quality criteria simultaneously. The 30-minute discovery call is the starting point.