Governance

The GCC Advisory Board provides strategical guidance on all aspects of GCC activities, including:

• Strategic direction on vision, work program and ambition of GCC.
• Advise on evolving trends in the Global Carbon Market development to identify buyers’ expectations with respect to standards and credits.
• Overview of activities performed by GCC Program, including its governance bodies and GCC Operations Team.
• Advise on further expansion of GCC to various sectors and geographic areas, and outreach activities.
• Overview of the process of accreditation of verifiers.

The Steering Committee is composed of renown experts acting in their personal capacities, who possess broad expertise in inter alia carbon markets, project evaluation/development, accreditation of verifiers, and climate change policies. In its activities, the Committee is guided by the relevant GCC standards (including Project Standard)  and procedural documents (including Program Processes). The Committee is supported by the GCC Operations Team. Activities of the Steering Committee include:

• Independent analysis of any matter submitted for consideration, review, or assessment.
• Review of the GCC verifier performance evaluation reports.
• Assessment of GCC verifier continuous compliance with applicable requirements contained in GCC Program Manual and Procedure for Approval of GCC Verifiers.
• Assessment of requests for registration of GHG emission reduction projects and requests for issuance of carbon credits (ACCs) submitted to GCC (i.e., approval or rejection of them) according to requirements contained in the GCC Program Processes document.

The Steering Committee operates using GCC’s internal workflow and electronic communication means (including for virtual meetings).

The Regulatory Committee is composed of renown experts acting in their personal capacities, who possess broad expertise in inter alia carbon markets, standard development (including bottom-up and top-down development of baseline and monitoring methodologies), and climate change policies. In its activities, the Committee is guided by the relevant GCC Standards and procedural documents. The Committee is supported by the GCC Operations Team. Activities of the Regulatory Committee include:

• Independent analysis of any matter submitted for consideration, review, or assessment.
• Consideration of key policy matters (e.g., relating to Article 6.2 of PA) to enhance GCC market position.
• Assessment of draft baseline and monitoring methodologies.
• Assessment of draft regulatory documents including standards, procedures, rules, requirements, and guidelines.
• Consideration of requests for the development of new methodologies and revision or withdrawal of GCC approved methodologies. Providing recommendations on any matter relating to guidelines and clarifications.
• Reviewing draft clarifications.

A third-party external verification is a key for ensuring credibility of carbon credits issued by GCC. GCC Verifier is an independent organization (Verification Body) approved by the GCC Program to provide verification services for projects submitted to, or registered under, the GCC.

For GCC Program, a third-party independent external verification is required to be conducted by GCC Verifiers at three critical stages in the GCC Project cycle:

• Project Registration Stage
• Post-registration Stage
• ACC Issuance Stage

GCC Verifiers are inter alia responsible for:

• Review of project submission documents.
• On-site review of GHG emission reduction/removal projects.
• Review of evidence (e.g., data collected by monitoring systems on ground) to check whether emission reduction/removal claimed by Project Owners was real.
• Review of monitoring reports.
• Preparing and submitting the project and emission reduction verification reports to GCC.

Monitoring reports and project and emission reduction verification reports of all projects registered under the GCC are available at the S&P Global Registry.

The Verification Standard describes the process of conducting a third-party independent verification of a GCC Project Activity.

Further details are available here.

The Verification Standard describes the process of conducting a third-party independent verification of a GCC Project Activity and provide requirements for GCC Verifiers for verifying and certifying:

• Greenhouse-gas (GHG) emission reductions and removals achieved by the Project Activity.
• Contributions towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• Claims that the Project Activity does not cause any net harm to the environment or/and society including the labels (E+ and S+).
• Compliance of CORSIA requirements to achieve CORSIA label (C+).
• Compliance of Article 6.2 requirements to achieve label CA+.