Scottish Forestry has announced new measures to ensure the Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) remains the “gold-standard” for verifying carbon credits deriving from new woodland planting schemes and woodland creation.

These new measures include expanding the “additionality” tests required to verify under the WCC whereby any given project must meet the relevant requirements, where “additionality” means the carbon sequestration over and above that which would have happened anyway in the absence of a given project or activity.

Buyers of carbon credits want to know that their engagement has enabled more carbon sequestration than would otherwise have happened under existing circumstances. Under the financial consideration, a project is only “additional” if it requires carbon income to turn it from a project which is not financially viable/worthwhile (in its own right, or compared to an alternative non-woodland use) to one which is financially viable.

The key changes to the “additionality” tests, which will come into force on 1st October this year, are:

• Simplification to make it easier for project developers and validators to use them
• Some standardisation to ensure they are applied consistently; and
• Changes to ensure that high land values do not skew the calculations.

These new measures are required due to the success and uptake of the WCC, given more diverse projects are now applying. With more than 500 projects registered with the WCC in the last two years alone in Scotland, it is imperative that further rules are introduced to ensure high quality carbon credits are created moving forward. It is also hoped that these new measures will help foster greater biodiversity and diversity within the woodland creation sector.

It is clear that demand for carbon credits has turbo-charged the market for plantable land and it is hoped that the new tests may cool this trend by reducing the risk of over-bidding by those buying land who might otherwise expect part of the cost to be recouped from carbon credits. A recent report by the Scottish Land Commission highlighted this issue.

As ever, the areas of carbon credits and natural capital are constantly evolving and the measures detailed above are in response to a rapidly growing and evolving sector.