In 2021 Gold Standard focused on forging new partnerships and further strengthening existing ones to support the evolution of the Voluntary Carbon Market and operationalising Article 6, to remove barriers to reducing scope 3 emissions, and to enable investors to manage and report on climate and sustainable development impacts. In 2022, we will continue these efforts to deliver concrete and scalable solutions that will support our mission to catalyse more ambitious action to achieve the Global Goals.
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ENSURING INTEGRITY IN MARKETS
2021 marked a year of rapid evolution for carbon markets, with significant increases in activity, the establishment of a new Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market and the welcome adoption of rules to underpin Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. With this dynamism set to continue through 2022, Gold Standard will continue to work with partners to advance our standard and drive climate security and sustainable development through high-integrity market applications.
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With support from the German Government, and with a new Head of Environmental Markets, we continued  our work on aligning the voluntary carbon market with the Paris Agreement, participating within cross-market initiatives, soliciting feedback from stakeholders in two consultations and publishing a new practitioners’ guide to provide up-to-date information on the key areas of change.
Beyond the voluntary carbon market, we worked with multiple governments to support  Article 6 operationalisation -- including the Swedish Energy Agency, Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, Ministry of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica and the Mongolian Government – and initiated steps to enable project proponents to develop high-impact Article 6 activities under Gold Standard.
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Our plan is to build for an evolving carbon market: Exploring technological solutions to streamline certification processes, preparing to support transactions under Article 6, and mainstreaming the use of climate contribution claims for unadjusted units.
We will also introduce more methodologies and explore new opportunities and collaborations to enable projects to deliver greater impact on the ground.
Finally, we will deepen our partnerships with Gold Standard users: expanding our in-team capacity to work with and support the interests and goals of our project developers, buyers and other partners.
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CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY
The private sector is a fundamental audience in realising our mission to catalyse more ambitious action to achieve the Global Goals. We help companies by developing high-integrity tools that support their journey to achieving Net Zero.
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The Value Change Initiative was officially launched, with continued pilot activities with corporate climate leaders, developing ways to reduce scope 3 emissions and claim them toward Science Based Targets, in line with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
We collaborated with ISEAL sustainability standards -- including Better Cotton Initiative, FSC, and Fairtrade International -- on an initiative to lower the climate impact of purchased goods and enable companies to credibly report on these benefits in their GHG  footprint. The report Accounting + Reporting the Climate Impact of Certified Commodities was published for consultation and testing will continue in 2022.
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We will develop a Claims Framework Service, based on good practice principles to ensure clear, accurate and credible reporting and claims in corporate or product communications. This will integrate with our work on climate contribution claims in the voluntary carbon market and our claims work in sustainable finance.
We are exploring how large scale Corporate Collective Action Funds can support multiple projects and help investors deliver credible sustainable, climate and biodiversity impacts and companies to future proof supply chains, meet climate targets and/or contribute to climate resilience + adaptation.
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SUSTAINABLE FINANCE
Gold Standard identified a unique opportunity to use Gold Standard for the Global Goals to support greater sustainable impact investment management for investors, including impact investors, governments, and development financial institutions, seeking consistent evaluation measures that ensure contributions are delivering genuine sustainable development. To drive this new area of work we hired a Head of Sustainable Finance, and will continue to identify and develop programmes that support sustainable finance flows for climate and development projects that deliver credible contributions and claims.
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In collaboration with an expert Working Group, we have developed new requirements for Portfolio Certification, including claims guidance, to certify impact funds. These new requirements enable sustainable impacts to be considered and valued by fund managers  throughout the project investment cycle, ensuring portfolios deliver on strategic aims and economic profits can be achieved with high impact investments. The Subnational Climate Finance (SCF) initiative ($750 million equity investment with approximately $28million TA in a blended finance ‘special purpose’ fund) is being used to pilot this approach. These new requirements will be released for consultation early 2022.
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Gold Standard and other ISEAL standards have been selected to support the development of the IUCN nature-based solution standard, which will enable project developers and investors to be rewarded for their NBS activities above and beyond carbon market activities.
In recognition of the need to rapidly scale efforts supporting adaptation and ensure they deliver maximum impact, we are working with Resilient Cities Catalyst to develop a new adaptation framework that will support project developers in accessing adaptation finance using Gold Standard.
We’re working to help minimise reporting costs for investors and corporates by identifying to what extent our methodologies align with emerging EU sustainable finance regulations – including the EU sustainable finance taxonomy, the sustainable finance disclosure regulation, and new labels, such as FAST Infra for sustainable city infrastructure. Early indications show that 80% of the data requirements are covered, which could support significant savings in reporting costs.
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ENHANCING OUR SYSTEMS
Simplifying processes and reducing costs for project developers is a core part of our mission to enable projects to scale. In 2021, we continued to pilot new ways to monitor impact to get better data more efficiently and worked on ways to reduce transactions costs and improve processes for project developers and auditors.
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We delivered the SDG Impact Tool that  standardises and streamlines SDG impact reporting for projects whilst ensuring impact claims are consistent, credible and meaningful.
We released four methodologies that use  updated and/or innovative new methods to quantify emission reductions and impacts:
- Methodology for metered & measured energy cooking devices
- Retrofit energy efficiency measures in shipping
- Emission reductions from safe water drinking water supply
- Reduced emissions from cooking and heating
We published new remote auditing procedures for VVBs and a preliminary review form to better support project developers navigating our standard.
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We will start the process to digitise our standard, making it easier, quicker and cheaper to certify project/programme interventions.
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