Risk-based, transparent, universal carbon credit ratings
The BeZero Carbon Rating provides users with a risk based assessment for understanding and interrogating carbon credit performance of any type, in any sector and country. Non-public information is not considered. Our methodology and approach are available here.
Definition and scale
The BeZero Carbon Rating (BCR) of voluntary carbon credits represents BeZero Carbon’s current opinion on the likelihood that a given credit achieves a tonne of CO2e avoided or removed.
The BeZero Carbon Rating uses an eight point scale ranging from "Highest likelihood" to "Lowest likelihood".
Search our project ratings
See the headline letter ratings for more than 300 project listings around the world.
Qualifying criteria
Projects must fulfil the following criteria to be eligible for a BeZero Carbon Rating.
The project must have applied an additionality test or provide sufficient information on how it is deemed additional.
The project must be audited by a recognised third party auditor in order to ensure the robustness of the data and information published.
Sufficient information on the design and ongoing monitoring of the project must be available in the public domain at all times. Non-public information will not be considered.
Analytical framework
The BCR follows a robust analytical framework involving detailed assessment of six critical risk factors affecting the quality of credits issued by the project.
Additionality
The risk that a credit purchased and retired does not lead to a tonne of CO2e being avoided or sequestered that would not have otherwise happened.
Over-crediting
The risk that more credits than tonnes of CO2e achieved are issued by a given project due to factors such as unrealistic baseline assumptions.
Non-permanence
The risk that the carbon avoided or removed by the project will not remain so for the time committed and any associated information risk.
Leakage
The risk that emissions avoided or removed by a project are pushed outside the project boundary.
Perverse incentives
The risk that benefits from a project, such as offset revenues, incentivise behaviour that reduces the effectiveness.
Policy
The risk that the policy environment undermines the project’s carbon effectiveness.
Rating process
Creating ratings is a four step process
Stage 1: macro factor assessment
Stage 2: project specific assessment
Stage 3: risk factor weighting
Stage 4: BCR committee review
Monitoring, watch, withdrawal processes
All BeZero Carbon Ratings (BCR) are valid at all times and are monitored on an ongoing basis.
The monitoring process involves reviewing all new information pertaining to the project, sector and methodology.
Such information includes, new research including alerts from satellite monitoring, new project documents including new monitoring reports, new/changes in regulations, changes in methodology and other information deemed relevant to the project or the rating.
Ongoing monitoring can lead to a rating being reaffirmed, placed on watch, upgraded, downgraded or withdrawn.
Geospatial and Earth observation
Monitoring nature based projects from space.
Geospatial and Earth observation data inform ratings, and are used to monitor ongoing activity around projects to ensure dynamic and up to date assessments.
Satellite monitoring provides an independent view of how things have changed before, during and after project activities.
Geostatistical models control for environmental variation, governance and human pressures, to distinguish project impacts from baseline expectations.
Natural hazards such as wildfire and drought are modelled to inform our view of non-permanence risk.
Sector classification
The BeZero Carbon Sector Classification system is a hierarchical sector classification system for the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM).
It comprises of three tiers; sector group, sector and sub-sector. There are 6 sector groups, 14 sectors, and 42 sub-sectors. To learn more, see our full Sector Hierarchy Classification.
FAQs
Total transparency
To scale effectively, participants across the Voluntary Carbon Market need more information transparency, which is why we publish our ratings process in full. Here we cover any outstanding questions.
See our Products
Access the world’s largest coverage of carbon credit ratings, data and analytics on our BeZero Carbon Markets platform and present our ratings on your platform through our API solution.