SustainCERT’s role as a certifier and verifier for climate standards

Notice: As of December 5th, 2024, SustainCERT is no longer providing certification services under Gold Standard. For information on the new assurance model, please refer to Gold Standard’s website directly.

SustainCERT is a climate impact verifier. Specifically for carbon markets it is a Validation and Verification Body for Verra and as a Certification Body for Gold Standard.

Validation and Verification for Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard Program

SustainCERT is an accredited Validation and Verification Body under ISO Standard 14065:2013 since 2023. This has enabled SustainCERT to expand its services for leading climate impact standards, and it was pleased to announce in August 2023 it had become an approved Validation and Verification Body in Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program. A verifier provides independent assessment of a climate project’s impact results. SustainCERT does not play a role as a certifier for Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard and the certification of projects is done internally by Verra.

Certification services for Gold Standard

SustainCERT was established in 2018 as an independent certification body for Gold Standard. The key objective was to ensure that Gold Standard’s role as a Standard was separate from its certification activities against its standards to ensure their integrity and independence.

As part of this partnership, a non-exclusive license agreement for Gold Standard certification was set up to which SustainCERT provided independent certification services to Gold Standard for the Global Goals customers. As certifier, our role is to certify climate impact projects are in line with the Standard requirements.