KCCI launches Carbon Reduction Certification Center

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry(KCCI) said Thursday that it has established the Carbon Reduction Certification Center, a professional organization that evaluates companies' voluntary carbon reduction activities and certifies their reduction achievements in support of efforts toward carbon neutrality.

Given it is difficult to achieve 100% carbon neutrality even if a company reduces carbon generated within its workplace as much as possible by converting to eco-friendly fuels and transitioning to RE100 (meaning getting all energy from renewable resources), it is necessary to have its performance evaluated and certified by a third-party certification organization.

Accordingly, the Carbon Reduction Certification Center prepared the "Korea Chamber of Commerce Carbon Reduction Certification Standards" to assess carbon reduction strategies and reduction performance of the company by inspecting its products, technologies, and services.

The new certification standards were created by benchmarking existing schemes such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is widely regarded as a global standard related to voluntary carbon reduction certification, and those of private-sector certification organizations such as Verra of the United States and the Gold Standard of Switzerland, and are currently in the process of fielding comments from stakeholders.

"Considering that the carbon reduction evaluation through an overseas certification body is complicated and takes an average of 18 months to be certified, our certification center will shorten the period to enhance convenience while ensuring reliability for member firms. We plan to work together with the government to promote voluntary carbon reduction activities of companies in the future," said an official of the KCCI.

Write to Jae-Fu Kim at hu@hankyung.com