In September 2025, the Climate Action Reserve (the Reserve), a crediting program in the voluntary carbon market, launched a work group and public consultation on "how its carbon crediting protocols should address" the "permanence" of greenhouse gas emissions reduction or removals that underlie carbon credits. Policy Integrity made the following recommendations:
- The Reserve should both clarify and reconsider its approach to permanence. In particular, the Reserve should define permanence according to the lifetime of emissions in the atmosphere.
- Tonne-year accounting has important shortcomings that the Reserve should weigh in evaluating tonne-year accounting's usefulness for addressing permanence.
- The Reserve could consider applying a social-welfare equivalence framework to complement the above-recommended, scientific definition of permanence.
- No matter how the Reserve approaches permanence, it should improve existing mechanisms to deal with reversal risks and should evaluate the challenges involved with embracing mechanisms like insurance.