Verra, S&P Global Launch New Carbon Project Registry

Carbon market standards organization Verra announced the launch of its new registry, powered by S&P Global Energy, aimed at advancing carbon market registration and enabling users to track and manage carbon, water and biodiversity credits throughout their lifecycles.

Founded in 2007 and based in Washington, D.C., Verra is a nonprofit organization that develops standards and operates registries for carbon credits and sustainable development programs. The company’s registry forms the central platform for managing and tracking information about projects and credits in Verra’s standards programs, and ensures the uniqueness of projects and credits in the system.

The launch of the new registry follows the establishment of a partnership between Verra and S&P Global last year, which included plans to introduce a sophisticated new registry designed to increase transparency and deliver greater value to market participants. Verra said that since announcing the partnership, it has been working to migrate more than 5,900 projects across the full pipeline—from draft through registered projects—in addition to 10,500 account holders, 1.4 billion credits, and 125,000 documents onto the new platform.

According to the companies, the new registry will incorporate quality standards, centralize verification documentation, provide unique identification and traceability for carbon credits, and enable users to efficiently track and manage carbon, water, and biodiversity credits throughout their lifecycles.

Leanne Todd, Head of Horizons, S&P Global Energy, said:

“By bringing this technology online, we are equipping market participants with the advanced workflows and new user interface of the S&P Global Energy Environmental Registry that simplifies the user experience. These workflows allow for a flexible and scalable system to meet the changing needs of the market as it grows.”

The new registry, integrated with the Verra Project Hub, allows users to track a project’s status in one place from pipeline listing through validation, issuance, transfer, and retirement within a single platform, replacing a workflow that previously required multiple systems, according to the companies.

The companies said that a future update will add enhanced Article 6 functionality and Application Programming Interface (API) services to the registry.

Verra CEO Mandy Rambharos said:

“We built this registry with S&P Global Energy as a foundation that we can keep expanding on. Over the next several phases, we will see things like transaction-ready API connectivity and deeper integration with exchanges, brokers, and marketplaces, so credits can move with the same speed and reliability the rest of this market now expects.”