Standardized Crediting Framework
The Standardized Crediting Framework (SCF) is a streamlined, country-owned emissions reduction crediting framework that improves transparency of national crediting decision making, reduces transaction costs, and shortens the time it takes to generate those emissions reductions. Developed and supported by the Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev), the SCF builds on the lessons learned from experiences with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) model, which was developed and used under the Kyoto treaty. This means that the SCF can help countries to access climate finance, lower transaction costs for emissions reduction crediting operations, and encourage private sector engagement in energy access.
The SCF addresses challenges faced by CDM programs in the current crediting system, especially energy access programs in Africa. These include:
- Low capacity of emission reduction developers—through simplification of reporting requirements and helping standardize most of the monitoring parameters at the national level;
- Interaction with domestic policies—by focusing on technologies with clear additionality;
- Data needs and the related transaction costs for monitoring—reduced by using more standardized approaches, using simplifications to the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system, and simplifying the project cycle.
