Gold Standard's New Rules on Paris Agreement Integrity
This article is an automatically translated version of the original Japanese article. Please refer to the Japanese version for the most accurate information.
This is a newsletter from Sustainacraft Inc.
Methodology Updates is a series that addresses carbon and biodiversity Credit Methodologies. This article explains the background, technical changes, and challenges faced by Project Developers regarding the new rules and guidance on Paris Agreement alignment announced by Gold Standard (GS) in October 2025.
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Author of this article: Keisuke Takahata (Lead, R&D Team)
Introduction
On October 6, 2025, Gold Standard (GS) became the first Voluntary Carbon Standard to announce comprehensive new rules and guidance for ensuring alignment with the Paris Agreement (hereinafter, PAA), and conducted a public consultation on them (which concluded on November 5, 2025). This move materializes a commitment made in 2021, and GS emphasizes that this new policy is essential to maintain the long-term value and credibility of Credits in an evolving global market.
While GS is currently advancing various initiatives for Paris Agreement alignment, the public consultation primarily focused on guidance concerning methodology stringency. The scope is broad, but particularly important is the introduction of downward adjustments to Baselines and new tools for Common Practice Analysis in Additionality assessments. This partially aligns with the Methodology guidelines under Paris Agreement Article 6.4, as introduced in the following newsletter:
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Going forward, each Methodology will be revised into a PAA Methodology (PA-Aligned Methodology) that complies with the Paris Agreement, referring to these new tools (Reference).
The schedule is also relatively tight:
- January 1, 2026, PAA Effective Date: All Credits with a Vintage (year of Issuance) of January 1, 2026, or later will be required to transition to the new PAA Methodologies. Even for those pre-sold under Offtake Agreements, compliance will be necessary if the Vintage is after this date.
- June 30, 2026, Sunset Date: This is the final deadline for new project applications based on the old rules. However, this applies to Credit Issuance under the old rules for Vintages up to December 31, 2025.
Leading up to this announcement, GS has been preparing gradually since 2021. Of particular note is the nature of the public consultation that was held this time. GS explicitly stated that the core Alignment Requirements and key dates of the PAA are indispensable elements for Paris Agreement compliance and are therefore not subject to revision. The opinions sought were exclusively related to the readability of the document and operational clarity. This demonstrates GS's strong determination to define the future of the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) in the Paris Agreement era from a top-down approach, rather than waiting for market consensus, and to require market participants to comply.
In addition to methodology stringency, GS is also considering larger changes, such as the classification of Credits based on the presence or absence of Corresponding Adjustments. While this was not part of the current public consultation, if implemented, it is likely to have a very significant impact on Project Developers and Credit Buyers.Below, we will first introduce the topic of Corresponding Adjustments, then elaborate on the methodology stringency, which was the subject of the current public consultation. Finally, we will consider how the entire VCM might evolve in relation to the Paris Agreement in light of these developments.
Future Plans: Introduction of Credit Classification Based on Corresponding Adjustments
In A practitioner’s guide: Aligning the Voluntary Carbon Market with the Paris Agreement, GS outlines discussion points and future to-dos for Paris Agreement compliance. Among these, the classification of Credits based on the presence or absence of Corresponding Adjustments is considered particularly important. While this was not within the scope of the current public consultation, if implemented, it is likely to have a very significant impact on Project Developers and Credit Buyers.
In "2.5 Avoidance of Double Counting" mentioned above, GS refers to classifying Credits into the following two types in the registry:
Authorized
Credits approved by the host country government, with a commitment to apply Corresponding Adjustments.
These will be usable as traditional "Offsets" for corporate Net Zero targets, etc.
Not Authorized (or “Mitigation Contribution”)
Credits without approval from the host country government, and for which Corresponding Adjustments are not applied.
The Emission Reductions are counted towards the host country's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) achievement. Companies cannot use these as Offsets, but can only claim them as a contribution to the host country's climate change efforts.