How to read a verification report
One real report, read in the order a buyer should read it, with the page number behind every statement.
What you will find in this guide
- Six things to read, in order: verifier, period, amount, findings, opinion, limits
- Every statement tied to a page of one public report
- Nine questions the report lets you put to a seller
1. Who verified, and under which standard
A verification report is where an independent body states how many tonnes a project reduced in a given period. It is not the project description (the plan and the estimate) nor the monitoring report (the project's own account): it is a third party's check of that account.
Start with the cover and the summary. This report was prepared by LGAI Technological Center, S.A. (Applus+ Certification) and issued on 04/04/2023 (p. 1). The reductions are claimed under the Verified Carbon Standard, version 4.4 (p. 2), with methodology ACM0001, version 19.0 (p. 3).
Then the verifier's standing: the report says the body is accredited by the UNFCCC and meets ISO 14065:2013 (p. 6). The validation, the earlier check of the project's design, is listed as another body's report, completed on 23/07/2021 (p. 43).
Read the summary against the rest: pp. 2 and 7 say the project “has been validated by Applus+ Certification”, while the reference list gives the validation report to Shenzhen CTI International Certification (p. 43) and p. 11 says Applus+ “only conducted verification”. When two pages disagree, open the validation report.
- Verification body and date of issue: p. 1
- Standard and methodology, with versions: pp. 2–3
- Who validated the project, and when: p. 43
- VVB means validation and verification body (p. 6). The report cites the VCS rule that a body shall not verify more than six consecutive years of a project's reductions (p. 11).
2. The period verified
A verification covers one monitoring period and supports credits for that period only. Here it runs from 26/07/2021 to 25/12/2022 (p. 2), 518 days by the report's count (p. 39). It is not the first: a monitoring report and a verification report for an earlier period date from August 2021 (p. 3).
The dates show how the work went: first monitoring report 16/01/2023, final version 03/04/2023 (p. 7); verifier on site on 30 and 31/01/2023 (p. 10); report issued on 04/04/2023 (p. 1).
The opinion splits the period into two calendar years, which it calls two vintage periods (pp. 41–42).
- Start and end of the period: p. 2
- Visit on site and people interviewed: p. 10
- Earlier periods and their reports: p. 3
- Match the period to the credits on offer: credits of the same project for other periods rest on other reports.
3. The verified amount against the estimate
The figure to find is the net one: 108,962 tCO2e for the period (p. 3), built from baseline emissions of 108,964, project emissions of 2 and leakage of 0 (p. 38). tCO2e means tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent: methane is converted with a fixed factor, 28 in this report (p. 18).
See where the tonnes come from: 96,887 tCO2e are baseline emissions of methane from the landfill and 12,077 are emissions from the grid electricity the plant replaces (p. 37). The second part can be redone by hand: 17,733.96 MWh times 0.66125 tCO2 per MWh, plus 3% for grid losses (p. 36), comes to about 12,078.
Then compare with the plan. The project description estimated 81,914 tCO2e a year (p. 2). The report scales that to the 518 days, 116,250 tCO2e, and shows the verified amount 6.27% below it, because the waste generated less methane than estimated (p. 39).
One line of scope is easy to miss: no credits are claimed for methane destroyed by the flare, only for methane used to generate power and for the electricity displaced (pp. 13–14).
- Net amount and the lines behind it: p. 38
- Split by year, 33,750 tCO2e for 2021 and 75,212 for 2022: p. 38
- Estimate and difference in per cent: p. 39
- An amount below the estimate is not a defect; look for a stated reason, as here. An amount well above it calls for the same question.
4. Findings and how they were closed
Verifiers record what they could not accept at first. This report uses a corrective action request (CAR) for a non-conformance or a mistake that affects the amount and a clarification request (CL) when information is insufficient or unclear; a forward action request (FAR) is an issue to check at a later verification (p. 11).
Here there was one finding: 1 CAR, no CL and no FAR (p. 3), and nothing left open from earlier reports (p. 11).
Appendix 2 holds the record. On 31/01/2023 the verifier asked the project to explain the difference between estimated and actual reductions; the project answered the next day; the request was closed on 03/04/2023 against the revised monitoring report, with the reason written out: less methane than estimated, which “will not cause over estimation of the emission reductions” (p. 47).
- Number and kind of findings: p. 3
- Request, answer, documents and reason for closing: p. 47
- Findings must be resolved before a request for issuance: p. 11
- Count less, read more: what a finding was about matters more than how many there were.
5. The opinion and its qualifications
The opinion is one sentence near the end. Here the reductions for the period, “as reported in Monitoring Report, prepared on the basis of the project’s Monitoring Plan are fairly stated” (p. 41), at a reasonable level of assurance (p. 6).
Read three things around it. Who answers for the data: the management of the project owner, not the verifier. What the opinion rests on: a list of confirmations, the last being that the reductions “are calculated without material misstatements” (p. 41). And whether anything is held back: a qualification would appear here, as an exception or a limit of scope. This opinion states none (pp. 41–42).
Reasonable assurance is the higher of the two levels in common use. It is an opinion that the figure is free of material error, reached with a risk-based approach (p. 41), not a guarantee of every tonne.
- The opinion and its period: p. 41
- Level of assurance: p. 6
- The amount restated by year: p. 42
- An opinion without qualifications is what you expect to find. “Except for”, “subject to” or “limitation” would be the most important words in the report.
6. What the report does not cover
A verification report certifies an amount for a period. Three things a buyer needs lie outside it.
Issuance. Findings must be resolved “prior to submitting a request for issuance” (p. 11): issuance is a later step, and nothing in the 48 pages says how many credits were issued, when, or how many are left.
Vintages and serial numbers. The amount is split by year (p. 42), but the only serial numbers in the report are those of meters and instruments (for example pp. 22 and 27), not of credits.
Double claiming. The verifier checked that the project takes part in no other programme or credit scheme, naming the databases consulted (p. 14), and found no double counting for the period (p. 12). That is a check at the time of verification: who later retires the credits, and for which claim, is not in the report, which does not mention corresponding adjustments (a host country's accounting entries for credits used elsewhere).
It is also a snapshot, issued on 04/04/2023 (p. 1): nothing later is in it.
- Credits issued, retired and available: the registry
- Serial numbers and vintage labels: the registry
- Who used the credits, and for what: retirement records
- The project page on CarbonMeld sets the registry data beside our document-based analysis of the same project.
Checklist: questions to ask a seller
With a report open, these are the questions it lets you ask. None is a verdict: each has an answer on a page.
- Which verification report covers the credits offered, and what is its period?
- Who verified, under which version of the standard and methodology, and who validated the project?
- What was the verified amount, what was the estimate for the same period, and what explains the difference?
- How many findings were raised, what about, and how was each closed?
- Is the opinion free of qualifications, and at what level of assurance?
- Was there a visit on site, and when?
- Which serial numbers and vintages on the registry correspond to this period, and how many of those credits are still unretired?
- Is the project, or was it, in any other programme or credit scheme?
- Has anything changed at the project since the date of the report?
- Ask for the page number with every answer.
