The Clean Air Task Force evaluated 25 biomass carbon removal credit protocols and found not a single one worthy of its highest rating. Seven scored “satisfactory,” twelve were “weak,” and six were “very weak.” Perhaps more revealing than the scores themselves: the carbon removal registries that developed these protocols pushed back so aggressively that CATF stripped the names from the results before publication, anonymizing which registry earned which grade.
Why It Matters
Biomass-based projects account for roughly 88% of all carbon removal credits sold to date, according to CDR.fyi. That’s a staggering concentration of market activity resting on accounting methods that an independent assessment just found to be mostly inadequate. Many of these sales are pre-purchases for projects that haven’t yet delivered certified credits, which means there’s still time to fix the plumbing before the water starts flowing. But the registries’ defensive reaction to the findings suggests the industry may not be eager to do the hard work of self-correction.
The Details
CATF researchers applied a uniform rubric of 18 criteria across all 25 protocols. The criteria covered how each protocol handled uncertainty, indirect emissions, co-products (like when a project generates both energy and carbon removal), monitoring of stored carbon, and safeguards for reversals. The protocols spanned four categories of biomass carbon removal: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), biochar production, biomass burial, and carbon stored in materials like long-lived wood products.
The scoring scale ran from “fundamentally flawed” to “exemplary.” No protocol hit either extreme, but the distribution skewed heavily toward the bottom. Only 28% of protocols earned “satisfactory.” Nearly three-quarters were “weak” or “very weak.”
One of the central problems CATF identified is a lack of common framework for lifecycle analysis, the accounting exercise that tallies all emissions associated with a project from start to finish to calculate net carbon removal. Kathy Fallon, director of CATF’s land systems program, compared it to doing your taxes: you start with total carbon stored and subtract emissions generated along the way. “Getting those deductions right can make a really big difference in the final result,” she told Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo.
For biomass projects specifically, the accounting gets tangled around a deceptively simple question: when does the project “start”? When the biomass is cultivated? When it’s harvested? When it enters the conversion process? The answer changes the math significantly. More than half of the protocols analyzed failed to account for some or all carbon flows occurring before the project’s key intervention, including what CATF calls the “alternative fate of the biomass” — whether some of that carbon might have ended up sequestered anyway, through soil migration or incorporation into construction materials.
This is the same category of accounting failure that cratered the forest carbon offset market. Those credits often claimed to prevent deforestation that was never going to happen, or counted carbon savings that were illusory. The parallel is uncomfortable.
The Anonymization Episode
The original version of CATF’s supplemental materials tied each protocol’s score directly to the registry that published it. When Heatmap contacted registries for comment, they “vehemently rejected the findings.” Shortly after, CATF edited the supplement to remove the names.
CATF framed this as a strategic choice: “We chose to focus our study on establishing a rubric and making recommendations that apply to all protocols rather than scoring protocols against each other in a nascent industry.” That’s a diplomatic way of saying the registries applied enough pressure to change the publication strategy.
This is worth sitting with. The voluntary carbon market’s credibility crisis was fueled in part by an industry that resisted scrutiny until the problems became too large to ignore. Registries lobbying to hide their individual scores from an independent assessment is not a confidence-building exercise. Transparency is supposed to be the product these organizations sell.
What This Changes
The optimistic read: CATF published this report now precisely because most biomass credits haven’t been delivered yet. Registries update their protocols regularly. If the industry takes the rubric seriously, there’s a genuine window to strengthen standards before the bulk of credits hit the market.
The less optimistic read: the registries’ reaction suggests they view this kind of assessment as a threat rather than a tool. If the pattern from forest carbon repeats, the market will scale first and reckon with accounting flaws later, after buyers have already committed billions.
Fallon noted that despite the poor grades, the team was “pleasantly surprised” that biomass protocols were in better shape than what they’d found in a similar 2024 assessment of forest carbon offset protocols. That’s a low bar, but it’s something.
Caveats
The report doesn’t claim that biomass carbon removal doesn’t work. It claims the methods used to certify and quantify it are inconsistent and often incomplete. A “weak” protocol doesn’t necessarily mean the underlying project fails to remove carbon; it means the paperwork can’t prove how much.
The anonymization also limits the report’s practical utility for credit buyers. Without knowing which registries scored well and which didn’t, purchasers can’t use the findings to inform procurement decisions. They’re left with a general warning that most protocols need improvement, but no map showing where the strongest and weakest standards live.
The biggest question going forward: will registries actually update their protocols in response, or will they treat this as a PR problem to manage? The answer will say a lot about whether the carbon removal credit market learned anything from the offset market’s collapse.
Source: Heatmap News