Background
The Gold Standard Foundation is a premium quality carbon credit certifier. It registers projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in ways that contribute to sustainable development, and certifies their carbon credits for sale on both the compliance and voluntary offset markets.
In 2008, REEEP funded a Gold Standard local experts programme, which trained 4 Gold Standard regional points of contact (POCs) who have in turn trained over 500 project developers, and resulted in over 30 new Gold Standard certified renewables and energy efficiency projects.
The further growth of the Gold Standard is hampered by a lack of capacity and experience amongst project validators (DOEs), a lack of Gold Standard training within regional and local governments (DNAs), and untapped support for RE/EE projects by local NGOs, financial institutions and other stakeholders.