Starting today, OffsetsDB includes data from two additional carbon offset registries: Isometric and Cercarbono, bringing the total number of registries covered by OffsetsDB to seven.
Adding new registries to OffsetsDB is required to maintain its usefulness. Historically, activity within the carbon market has been concentrated within a handful of offset registries. By some estimates, the five registries originally included in OffsetsDB represent 98 percent of the market. More recently, however, we’ve seen the emergence of a number of new offset registries, each tailored to slightly different parts of the carbon market. Isometric and Puro, for example, entered the market to satisfy a growing demand for long-duration carbon removal. Other registries, like Global Carbon Council or Cercarbono, serve more niche corners of the traditional carbon market. Cercarbono, for example, had an early emphasis on offset projects developed in Colombia.
While these newer registries are still small, they all have the potential to grow in the years to come. Isometric, for example, has issued fewer than 100,000 credits to date. That’s a tiny fraction of the 2.6 billion credits OffsetsDB currently tracks. But Isometric is also rapidly growing. In just a few short years, it has onboarded more than 300 projects. Having their data included in OffsetsDB from an early stage will make it possible to track that growth and compare Isometric’s projects to the broader market.
At the outset of this OffsetsDB update, we’d hoped to add another three or four registries to the tool. That process proved harder than expected. Early on, the teams at Isometric and Cercarbono expressed enthusiasm for the idea, which paved the way for integrating their data. Other registries were less forthcoming, so we weren’t able to incorporate their data. Registries exist to provide an open and auditable record of offset projects and the credits they produce — a service that prevents double counting of individual credits and gives market participants the data they need to vet credit quality. Limiting who can access and inspect registry data is disappointing, and can only damage the long-term credibility of the carbon market as a whole.