The Guardian/Verra investigation, and what it actually means if you're buying credits today
In January 2023, an investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial looked at the rainforest protection (REDD+) credits certified by Verra — the largest carbon credit registry in the world — and found that the large majority of the credits they examined likely didn't represent real emissions reductions. Verra disputed the methodology used, but the investigation reshaped how seriously buyers, journalists, and regulators look at the word "certified."
We link to this story directly from our Trust & Transparency page rather than hoping nobody asks about it, because it's the single most important piece of context for understanding why we built OpenCarbon the way we did.
What actually went wrong
The core issue wasn't fraud in the sense of stolen money — it was a measurement problem. REDD+ credits are supposed to represent forest that would have been cut down without the project's intervention. That's a counterfactual: you're paying for something that didn't happen. Estimating "what would have happened anyway" turns out to be extremely hard to do accurately at scale, and the investigation found that many projects' baselines were set in ways that overstated the deforestation they were preventing.
Why "the registry accepted it" isn't enough
Verra's acceptance of a project is a floor, not a ceiling. It means a project met a registry's process requirements — not that an independent party re-verified the actual climate outcome. That's exactly the gap that groups like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), Sylvera, and BeZero Carbon exist to close, by re-assessing projects against stricter, more current criteria than registry approval alone.
What we actually do about it
Every project on OpenCarbon carries a Core Score built by layering ICVCM Core Carbon Principles status and third-party ratings on top of registry status — never treating registry acceptance as the finish line. We show the score next to its biggest open uncertainty, not just a green checkmark, and when a score changes we record why. Full breakdown on how we score projects.
We also link to Carbon Market Watch, an independent watchdog that's openly critical of this industry — including of registries we use — on purpose. If you only ever hear about carbon credits from people selling them, you're not getting the full picture, and we'd rather you got it from us than found it despite us.
The three example projects currently listed on OpenCarbon are placeholders while we onboard real, registry-verified projects. See our Trust & Transparency page for what changes once they're live.