When it comes to the voluntary carbon market, integrity isn’t optional — it’s the foundation of the entire industry.
And ICROA is the industry’s de facto beacon of quality assurance.
Today, Riverse joins the list of carbon crediting programs endorsed by ICROA.
Riverse is the 12th independent organization to receive the ICROA accreditation worldwide, the first dedicated to circular economy projects, and the first fully endorsed under its rigorous new assessment procedure, established at the end of 2023.
The ICROA endorsement underscores the scientific rigor and transparency of the Riverse Standard.
That’s exactly what buyers expect and what the market needs — high-quality, trustworthy credits that move companies closer to their net zero commitments.
Antoine Diemert, ICROA Accreditation and VCM Policy Director at IETA, said:
"ICROA is pleased to add Riverse to its list of endorsed crediting programmes. Riverse’s pioneering work incentivizes and accelerates the transition to a circular and sustainable industry, and their Standard has successfully met all of ICROA’s criteria."
The first carbon credit certification focused on circular economy projects.
We need to shift from an unsustainable, linear model to a sustainable, circular economy. And while Europe leads the way in environmental policy and regulation, it lags in carbon avoidance and removal financing. We need more European projects on the voluntary carbon market.
That’s why we support circular economy projects that remove and avoid greenhouse gas emissions. Removal and avoidance are both crucial mitigation pathways, and partnering with projects that deliver both through coproducts is core to our mission and approach.
This unique focus is particularly compelling and important for a few reasons:
- Buyers can purchase carbon credits that are relevant to their value chains and geographies. For example, a construction company in Europe can buy credits from a biobased construction materials project in Europe, and an IT services company can buy credits from an electronics refurbishing project.
- Circular economy projects offer substantial environmental and social benefits — like deploying local value chains, creating meaningful jobs, and enabling the reuse of valuable materials. Take the example of a biogas project: in addition to avoiding CO2 emissions by substituting biogas for natural gas (a fossil fuel), the production process has the co-product of producing digestate, an organic soil amendment that improves soil health and replaces the use of mineral fertilizer, which often causes disastrous environmental and social consequences from runoff.
- Our unique focus on technology-based projects provides buyers with carbon credits that are measured and verified through precise, auditable industrial data, all of which is accessible on our registry.
What it really means to have high-quality, trustworthy credits.
Riverse has certified 41 projects and issued over 150,000 high-quality, trustworthy carbon credits since starting to operate in 2022.
But every carbon credit standard says they’re high-quality and trustworthy.
Let’s break down what we really mean, and how our proprietary platform, built by our climate science and engineering team, makes it possible.
- Our platform integrates models that measure avoided and removed emissions in compliance with the Riverse methodologies and ISO 14064-2.
- Models are built with primary data from the field, with up to 30 data points continuously monitored per project, across 40+ operating sites. Because projects are tech-based, we have a bunch of extensive auditable, precise industrial data (eg. energy consumption, material flows, efficiency and material losses), which we combine with additional requirements for lab tests or sampling on sensitive data points (eg. carbon or nutrient content)
- Models are modular, designed to adapt to the different types of processes that a project may implement within a given technology. Project developers can select the specific capture, feedstocks, energies, and storage mechanisms that best describe their process, making credit calculations more accurate.
- Projects are assessed and updated on a regular basis — at least annually. Third party validation and verification bodies audit the greenhouse gas accounting models and the primary data uploaded from each project, ensuring the issuance of ex-post credits with audited and verified sources.
- We work closely with both project developers and market stakeholders to ensure our standard meets both scientific rigor and practical market expertise, while enabling more project developers access and participate in the voluntary carbon market. We’ve onboarded 46 project developers and more than 15 carbon credit sales partners, and received hundreds of comments from market and technical experts in public consultations and scientific reviews of our methodologies and standard rules.
High-quality credits, in a more efficient way
Our platform makes it possible to issue high-quality, trustworthy carbon credits 20 times faster and at a cost 3 times lower than current market standards — and ICROA’s endorsement underscores our commitment to rigor.
Interested in learning more about Riverse?
For project developers: get in touch here
For sales partners: get in touch here
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