What you need to know about our new Verification Requirements for Value Chain Interventions

We’ve just published the latest version (0.91) of our Value Chain Intervention Requirements. Updates include clarifications on key topics and further aligned terminology with standards bodies. Find out the main differences compared to the previous version, and what this means for our clients.

At SustainCERT we provide verification services for interventions aimed at greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions and removals in company value chains. The Verification Requirements for Value Chain Interventions outline how companies must design interventions that are both scientifically credible and fit for Scope 3 reporting. These Requirements are derived from the Value Change Initiative Guidance v 1.1, Value Chain (Scope 3) Interventions – Greenhouse Gas Accounting & Reporting Guidance.

As part of our strive to continuously improve, we’re updating our requirements to ensure maximum usefulness and relevancy. Based on input from corporations successfully piloting Requirements version 0.9 since its launch in 2021, this fresh update provides clarifications on key topics such as boundary definition and further aligns terminology with standards bodies in the sector. These Requirements are supplementary to, and to be used in conjunction with, the accounting approaches provided in the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain Scope 3 Calculation Guidance. The underlying intention is to catalyze co-investment, from partners across the supply chain, into companies’ emission hot spots that encounter significant barriers to emission reductions.

These Requirements are focused on impact verification, with new guidance coming soon relating to claiming impact.

Boundary definition

A key update to the Requirements brings greater clarity to boundary definition for interventions. To make project-accounted reductions ready for Scope 3 reporting, the intervention boundary must be defined on a cradle-to-gate basis, meaning all relevant indirect emissions must be accounted for. The update provides more detail on how this should be done, and the conditions under which any relevant but low-impact emissions can be excluded from quantification and monitoring. The aim is to simplify the procedure and limit the data handling to those processes that are both relevant to the intervention and feasible to monitor.

The new ‘de minimis’ threshold seeks to balance the practicality of monitoring and quantifying relevant processes within the boundary, compared to their impact. Overall, the Requirements continue to give intervention representatives agency over how best to define the relevant processes impacted by the intervention.

Improved data requirements for faster impact reporting

The updated Requirements ask intervention representatives to provide information that better enables the integration of emission reductions into claimants’ inventories, ultimately reducing the ‘impact to reporting’ time.

These Requirements enable credible Scope 3 reporting, aimed at partners looking to set up and implement Value Chain Interventions targeting Scope 3 Category 1.

Projects are obliged to comply with v0.91 from 1st January 2025, with the exception of projects that:

• Have an MSA/SOW specifying the use of Requirements version 0.9.
• Are already in the trajectory prior to launch (including capacity building, discovery, QA review, and/or audit phases). This means any of these phases were completed, ongoing, and/or not begun at launch (e.g., waiting for next verification).

Existing projects, as specified above, may continue using the previous version (0.9). The new Requirements do not conflict with the previous version. Clients with existing projects may voluntarily shift to the new Requirements, which may incur a transition fee. Any clients joining us in the future will need to align with the updated Requirements.

The Requirements document has been developed for validation and verification to provide assurance to companies that the interventions they invested in have generated positive mitigation outcomes.

The Requirements offer two levels for validation and verification, resulting in either reasonable or limited assurance. A ‘reasonable’ level of assurance enables companies who were not directly involved in the intervention to confidently claim and report reduced Scope 3 emissions. SustainCERT’s value chain platform VIVID allows them to do so credibly, wherever they are in the value chain. A ‘limited’ level of assurance allows intervention investors to claim the mitigation outcomes only in their own Scope 3 inventory, or to make narrative communication claims that are not part of an inventory (e.g., for a simple sustainability report).

Building on this latest update, a forthcoming paper will present practical guidance on what claims a company can make when purchasing lower-emitting goods that benefit from the upstream, verified intervention. Further guidance will also be provided on how these impacts should be accounted for in Scope 3, as well as how to link the claim back to the impacted goods, and therefore value chain, through a comprehensive proof of sourcing framework.

Users of these Requirements (v0.91) should note that many policy initiatives are underway which may affect a proposed intervention directly or indirectly. For example, as of May 2024, the GHG Protocol is working on the Land Sector and Removals Guidance, and codes of conduct are being developed for carbon buyers and sellers (Claims Code of Practice and Core Carbon Principles, respectively).