iCR's New Integrity Stack Sets a Carbon Market First: Ratings and Insurance Risk Assessment on Every Registered Project

The International Carbon Registry (iCR) today announced a carbon-market first: every project registered on iCR will carry both an independent MSCI Carbon Project Rating and a Kita risk assessment, with optional insurance eligibility.

The new integrity stack makes iCR the first and only global carbon registry to systematically mandate third-party ratings and financial-grade risk assessment across all registered projects. The ratings and risk assessments will be available on CarbonRegistry.com

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"For years, carbon credit buyers have been expected to carry out their own due diligence before buying, creating inconsistency, confusion, and a lack of trust across the market." said Oli Torfason, COO of iCR.

"So we decided to flip that model. On iCR, from now on, independent ratings and risk analysis are embedded directly into the registration process, not treated as optional add-ons. This is layered on top of the third-party validation and verification traditionally carried out by accredited verifiers. It's important that every credit tells a true story and our goal is to help carbon credits evolve into a consumer-grade product, rather than an asset class where every single transaction requires its own due diligence process."

What Changes for Projects and Buyers

For project developers, the new framework makes quality and risk legible to capital markets and commercial, not just carbon specialists. Answering credibility questions up front reduces friction with buyers and improves access to offtake, forward finance, and insured delivery arrangements. Buyers and investors benefit from independent quality signals that are comparable across methodologies and geographies, as well as independent risk assessment aligned with the requirements of insurance and structured finance. This provides a clearer basis for procurement, portfolio construction, and helps restore confidence in the market.".

"We have spent years building iCR as both a GHG program and registry infrastructure for high-integrity climate action. This next step adds an independent analytical layer to that foundation. Validation and verification confirms conformity, ratings help explain quality, and risk assessment helps the market understand delivery and permanence risk. Together, these elements make carbon credits more transparent, comparable, and usable. Not only for carbon specialists, but also for corporates, investors, and insurers that need reliable signals before committing capital." says Gudmundur Sigbergsson, Founder of iCR.

iCR's Integrity Stack: Independent by Design

iCR's integrity stack has always been built on independent validation and verification of projects by accredited third-party verifiers and that foundation remains in place.

• Third-party verification - accredited verifiers independently validate and verify every project. This foundation remains in place.
  
• MSCI Carbon Project Ratings (new) - every iCR project receives a standardised, rules-based rating covering additionality, permanence, and implementation quality.
  
• Kita risk assessment (new) - financial-grade evaluation of delivery, performance, and permanence risk - with optional insurance coverage for buyers who want it.
  

The verifier, the rater, and the risk assessor are all independent. This structure reinforces a clear separation between registry governance and market evaluation.

"Carbon markets need the same independent signals that underpin global capital markets. The integration of MSCI Carbon Project Ratings into this new infrastructure will help improve comparability, transparency and access to standardised, reliable data for buyers and investors, enabling them to act with greater confidence and in turn support the flow of capital to higher quality climate projects," says Tristan Loffler, Head of Carbon Projects, MSCI

"Risk doesn't disappear just because a credit is issued. iCR's approach recognizes that permanence and delivery risk must be continuously assessed if carbon credits are to function as financial assets," says Paul Young, CTO & Co-founder, Kita

From Registry to Integrity Infrastructure

The ratings and risk layers sit alongside iCR's existing assurance framework, which includes:

• Independent validation and verification by ISO 14065 accredited VVBs
  
• iCR quality oversight, including conformity and procedural reviews
  
• CarbonRegistry.com, iCR's digital platform built using blockchain technology for traceability, data access, and lifecycle transparency
  

Together, these elements form a continuous, auditable chain of trust, from project design through issuance, transfer, and retirement, designed to meet the expectations of corporates, investors, insurers, and regulators alike.

"For too long, ratings, risk assessment, and validation have lived in disconnected workflows that buyers had to stitch together themselves. What we've built with MSCI and Kita is a registration flow where independent assessment happens as part of the process, not after the fact. That's what it takes to make quality and risk visible by default rather than on request," says Björn Halldór Helgason, CPTO

"iCR's market-first initiative to integrate quality and risk assessments directly into the registry, bringing together MSCI's independent ratings and Kita's insurer-led risk intelligence, is a powerful example of how market participants can collaborate to make the carbon credit buying process easier for both project developers and buyers. It also demonstrates how coordinated action across the value chain can help drive the market forward.

Kita is incredibly proud to be part of this initiative, which not only makes strong commercial sense, but also encourages projects to be designed and implemented from the outset in ways that improve their risk profile and ultimately make them insurable," says Natalia Dorfman, CEO, Kita

Note:

London Climate Action Week: The team behind iCR, along with our partners, will be in London and available for meetings throughout the event.

https://news.cision.com/international-carbon-registry/r/icr-s-new-integrity-stack-sets-a-carbon-market-first--ratings-and-insurance-risk-assessment-on-every,c4361836

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SOURCE International Carbon Registry