The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market announced recently that Amy Merrill will become its first Chief Executive Officer.
Amy has served as the Integrity Council’s interim Chief Operating Officer since December 2023 and since February 2023 has worked with the Integrity Council’s Executive Secretariat on secondment from her role as Senior Director and Head of Global Markets at Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES). She has steered the Integrity Council through a key period of growing support and recognition for its high-integrity Core Carbon Principles (CCPs). She has also played an important role in the delivery of decisions concerning the first carbon crediting programs and methodologies to meet the CCP criteria.
A qualified lawyer, Amy has over 20 years’ experience developing climate and carbon finance policy frameworks and developing legal documentation relating to climate change. She brings extensive knowledge of the global compliance and voluntary carbon markets, and deep policy and legal expertise, having led the UNFCCC secretariat’s support for the development and adoption of rules for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. During her decade as a senior lawyer at the UNFCCC secretariat, she also led its legal support for the Kyoto Protocol flexible mechanisms and launched the work of the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee.
Prior to the UNFCCC, Amy was a senior carbon and climate finance lawyer in the City of London working with multilateral development banks and investment banks. More recently she was Senior Legal Manager for Climate Asset Management, where she developed and negotiated investment documents for scaled investment in community focused nature-based projects.
Amy began her new role from Monday 1st July 2024.
Annette Nazareth, Chair of the Integrity Council’s Governing Board said: “The Integrity Council is extremely fortunate to have Amy as our CEO. Her vast experience in carbon market issues will be invaluable as the Integrity Council seeks to deliver on our core mission to bring high integrity to the voluntary carbon markets. Amy combines deep knowledge with an abiding passion to make a difference on our urgent climate matters.”
“Amy brings a formidable combination of world-leading expertise in carbon markets, a policymaker’s eye for the big picture, a lawyer’s attention to detail and good process, and an indefatigable work ethic,” said C2ES President Nat Keohane. “Over the past year and a half, and particularly since she’s been interim COO, the work Amy has done to deliver on the mission and strengthen the reputation of the Integrity Council has been remarkable. Under her continued leadership, I have no doubt that the Integrity Council will cement its position as the trusted voice on high-quality carbon credits – creating the foundation of integrity and transparency that is needed to scale the market so that it becomes a genuine force for good in cutting climate pollution and supporting sustainable green growth in the Global South.”
Amy Merrill, CEO of the Integrity Council said: “Done well, carbon markets can be transformational. I have worked for more than twenty years on carbon markets, and I have seen many impactful projects that unlock private finance and enable communities, peoples and smallholders to thrive. Getting it right is hard and it is also very much worth the effort.
“I am excited to work with the Integrity Council’s stakeholders and staff on our mission: a scaled voluntary carbon market that delivers positive climate and sustainable development impacts while incentivizing deep decarbonization action by corporates all around the world.”
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market is an independent governance body for the voluntary carbon market. Through its CCPs and Assessment Framework, it is defining the criteria that all high integrity carbon credits should satisfy.
Governments, regulators and corporates are increasingly looking to the CCPs as an international standard for integrity. Last month the U.S. government published principles for high-integrity credits which are closely aligned with the CCPs. ISDA (the International Swaps and Derivatives Association) has endorsed the CCPs and CCP-labelled credits as providing a benchmark of quality in the voluntary carbon market. While the UK government has announced that it intends to consult on endorsement of the CCPs and consider how to reflect them in policy, regulation, and guidance and the Monetary Authority of Singapore is exploring how to align its transition credits with the CCPs.
The largest carbon-crediting programs in the market have enhanced their procedures to comply with the CCPs and are now eligible to issue CCP-labelled credits using the first set of methodologies that have been approved.
The Integrity Council is continuing to assess additional carbon crediting programs and intends to assess methodologies that cover more than half the credits in the market by later this year.