Standard: The Gold Standard
Founding Organization: The Gold Standard Foundation
Headquarters: Basel, Switzerland
Website: www.cdmgoldstandard.org
Eligible Projects:
- Photovoltaics (Solar Panels)
- Solar thermal (Electricity and heat generation only)
- Ecologically sound biomass, biogas, and liquid biofuels
- Wind-power
- Geothermal
- Small low-impact Hydro (15 MW size limit)
- End Use Energy Efficiency Initiatives
Summary:
The Gold Standard is the leading verification standard for carbon offsets. It employs the most stringent standards, above and beyond that required by the Kyoto Protocol. The concept behind the verification is simple: a project that is good for the environment should also be good for the local community.
Gold Standard projects must demonstrate the following three principles:
- Environmental Protection- The project should preserve and enhance things such as water quality, air quality, soil condition, and biodiversity.
- Social Sustainability and Development- The project should contribute to local employment, the alleviation of poverty, access to energy services, and the empowerment, education, and involvement of local people.
- Economic and Technological development- The project should improve the local economy through technology transfer, which in turn creates skills development and new market opportunities among the local community.
Furthermore, the Gold Standard differentiates itself from all other standards in four ways:
- Only renewable energy and energy efficiency projects are eligible. In this way, the Gold Standard promotes the development of renewable energy infrastructure within a region.
- Project developers must use the UNFCCC Additionality Tool, a step-by-step guideline to showing a project is additional.
- Project developers must engage local stakeholder through two stakeholder consultation meetings. The purpose of these meetings is to gather and appropriately address local concerns about the project.
- All project’s are required to apply the Sustainability Matrix and meet the following three criteria:
- None of the scores can equal -2
- All sub-total scores must be positive
- The net score must be positive
