Alistair Fury, CEO of carbon credit ratings firm Sylvera, discusses opacity and broker margins in voluntary carbon markets with Shayle Kann.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fury: Forestry projects frequently claim credits for pre-funded government plantings
“Maybe your, maybe the field report was in China, and the Chinese government paid us fully to do that project as part of its, like, regional reforestation initiatives five years before the project even started, right? So, and this is, like, not a theoretical ex…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carbon auditor approved dead mangrove project because specific sample plots survived
“And we've seen that, for example, in a mangrove project where we were asking the auditor who's doing the verification, the MRV, hey, you know, what was going on in the project? We knew that most of the mangroves were dead, right? So, and they were like saying,…”
Assertion Supported
Sylvera rates under a quarter of carbon credits in top three grades
“We would say of the credits on the market the minority have like a strong environmental integrity. So you'd maybe say around, well actually less than a quarter, we would rate in our top three grades. And now you would have very, very high degree of confidence …”
Disclosure
Fury: Carbon credit prices were initially inversely correlated with project quality
“In fact, at the beginning, when we first did our first kind of plot of the market price versus the rating, they were inversely correlated. So it's basically like the better the credit, the cheaper it was.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fury: None of 40+ biochar developers shared data with Sylvera
“In the biochar sector we reached out to over 40 developers And typically, you can issue credits with, for biochar without having to go through a very process where you'd have public documentation and a level of transparency. Not a single one would share us any…”
Insight
Fury: Lack of legal liability incentivizes carbon developers to inflate impact figures
“Where there's an incentive for the number to be high and there's no legal no legal consequence for you putting an extra zero on the end. People tend to put an extra zero on the end which is just like human nature and like, you know, people want their, they bel…”