Gathering experts representing its steering committee, the Global Carbon Council (GCC) hosted year 2022’s first Steering Committee Meeting on May 23 and 24, at Mondrian Hotel in Doha. The two-day event commenced with a note from GCC’s Founding Chairman, Dr. Yousef Alhorr, who welcomed the committee members from Austria, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, France and Germany who joined in person as well as virtually.
The first day of GCC Steering Committee Meeting started with GCC Operations team sharing key updates, and discussed key strategic issues, namely:
- GCC Program’s progress and implementation experiences including frequently encountered issues in preparing project documentation to carry out assessment of GHG reduction projects for the issuance of carbon credits.
- Work plan of development of new regulatory framework and methodologies on CCS, Nature-based Solutions, revision of documents such as project standard, environment & social safeguard standard and project sustainability standard.
- Discussed various methodologies in development including renewable energy-based desalination, grid-connected battery storage and future priority areas e.g. scaling up the building sector mitigation, green hydrogen, refrigerant switch and electrical vehicles.
- Develop a vibrant GCC Marketplace including that can improve the user friendliness and predictability for buyers and project owners.
- Strengthen the GCC accreditation system and verification capacity.
- Measures for avoidance of double accounting following the provisions of latest standard, engaging with governments on letter of authorization and exploring the role for GCC in domestic mitigations schemes.
- Enhancing awareness on role of carbon markets into accelerating renewable energy projects implementation.
- Enhancing market access through connection to exchanges, including blockchain platform, while ensuring that the safeguards are in place.
GCC team and committee members in attendance acknowledged that GCC has put significant efforts to create a vibrant carbon marketplace. GCC Operations team further highlighted that while maintaining this successful trajectory, there is a need to continually improve carbon finance predictability, enhance user friendliness of the GCC Program, and seek buy-ins from governments for supporting domestic GHG schemes as well as issuance of ITMOs under Article 6.2. As an intended plan for the 2022–23 period, it was agreed that the GCC Program will work towards these goals. Similarly, members of the GCC Operations team discussed their ongoing work in obtaining more international accreditations alongside the existing ICAO’s CORSIA and ICROA.
Steering Committee also discussed several queries from stakeholders related to several operational aspects of the Program and agreed to respond to them.
The two-day event concluded with insightful feedback from committee members on the path forward, leading to a brainstorming session on ways in which GCC Program can play a more significant role in global and regional mitigation activities.
