Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Chay: Protocols issue carbon credits for farming practices started a decade ago

Freya Chay (Freya Che) · The dirt on soil carbon credits · Aug 25, 2022 · at 23:32

Freya Chay of CarbonPlan discusses protocol design flaws that undermine additionality in the voluntary soil carbon credit market.

0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.6s

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“A lot of these protocols allow people to get credits for practices they started a while ago, like maybe up to 10 years ago.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Many soil carbon offset protocols allow land managers to receive carbon credits for agricultural practices initiated up to 10 years prior.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Published evaluations of soil carbon offset protocols active as of August 2022 confirm that multiple protocols allowed land managers to generate credits for agricultural practices adopted up to 10 years prior. A 2021 systematic review by CarbonPlan evaluating 14 soil carbon offset protocols found that 10 allowed eligible practice changes to have been implemented 5 to 10 years prior to registration, granting retroactive credits or ongoing crediting based on historical adoption. Furthermore, a March 2022 review in Science (Oldfield et al.) confirmed that protocols including Nori and Regen Network allowed 10-year lookback periods for crediting early adopters.

Oldfield et al. in Science (March 2022) documented that soil carbon protocols including Nori and Regen Network feature lookback periods permitting crediting for management practices adopted up to 10 years prior to enrollment.
CarbonPlan's systematic evaluation of 14 soil carbon protocols (2021) found that 10 protocols permitted practice changes implemented 5 to 10 years before project registration to qualify for crediting.
Nori's U.S. Croplands Methodology explicitly enabled growers to designate a 'switch year' up to 10 years prior to project enrollment and earn credits for resulting carbon removal.

Checked against

[1] ovid.com [2] dokumen.pub [3] carbonplan.org [4] carbonplan.org [5] carbonplan.org [6] carbonplan.org [7] unitedsoybean.org [8] lexiconoffood.com

"Soil Enrichment Protocol" "Climate Action Reserve" "start date" OR "lookback" OR "prior" Verra VM0042 lookback period practice change prior CarbonPlan soil protocols lookback crediting period "Science" "Crediting agricultural soil carbon sequestration" "look-back" "10 years" Nori soil carbon lookback period 10 years "Regen Network" "lookback" OR "10 years" soil carbon "Soil Enrichment Protocol" "Climate Action Reserve" "ten years" OR "10 years" OR "5 years" OR "historical" "CarbonPlan" "soil protocols" "10 of 14 protocols" OR "backdating" OR "prior to project"

assessed as of 2026-09-02

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

soil carbon protocols

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More from Freya Chay (Freya Che)

Assertion Supported

Chay: Soil carbon protocols broadly lack measurement, permanence, and additionality

“We did a really interesting review of all of the protocols, so all of the crediting rules that are currently used to issue credits to soil carbon in collaboration with Jane Zelikova, and basically, you know, you have these PDF documents that, maybe you have mu…”

Freya Chay (Freya Che) Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 9:18 The dirt on soil carbon credits

Insight

Chay: Treating uncalibrated models like sampled soil creates a race to the bottom

“If you're in a market and everything looks like a ton, so I could take any of these approaches and get tons that I can sell, and they look the same in the market you really result in a race to the bottom. It's way easier to not sample anything and get some ton…”

Freya Chay (Freya Che) Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 13:57 The dirt on soil carbon credits

Assertion Supported

Chay: California depleted its 100-year forest carbon wildfire buffer in 10 years

“Yeah, it's not all the way gone, but we've, we have used up all of the credits that were meant to protect against forest fires for the next 100 years in the first 10 years of the program.”

Freya Chay (Freya Che) Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 18:54 The dirt on soil carbon credits

Opinion

Chay: Soil carbon additionality screens function primarily as box-checking exercises

“Across the board, you see additionality screens that, in my opinion, look a lot more like box checking exercises and a lot less like, kind of, a rigorous questioning around how these dollars enable new practices.”

Freya Chay (Freya Che) Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 25:06 The dirt on soil carbon credits

Opinion

Chay: Ton-year accounting fails to reflect the physical reality of temporary storage

“There are different methods, but I would lead by saying, I really don't think we should do it. I don't think tenure accounting represents the physicality of temporary carbon storage in a meaningful way.”

Freya Chay (Freya Che) Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 38:07 The dirt on soil carbon credits

Insight

Chay: Robust soil carbon offsets require physical soil sampling at project locations

“Consensus is you really need to sample your soil in the place that you're trying to quantify outcomes if you want to have a robust quantification that you can use for an offset.”

Freya Chay (Freya Che) Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 12:19 The dirt on soil carbon credits

Chay: Protocols issue carbon credits for farming practices started a decade ago

More from Freya Chay (Freya Che)

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