Registry rules of use

The various project statuses are outlined below:

• Draft - When the project developer has started to enter the project details on the registry but not submitted it. Draft projects are not registered or shown in the public view.
• Under development - The project developer has entered and submitted the project details. The project is now ‘registered’ and will appear on the public view.
• Validated - The project has been validated and documents have been uploaded.
• Verified - The project has been verified and the documents have been uploaded.
• Not delivered - A project which has been validated, but is not verified for some reason, will be marked 'not delivered'. It can't be re-activated. 

All projects will be shown on the public view of the UK Land Carbon Registry once they move from ‘draft’ to the ‘under development’ stage. 

Types of unit 

The registry includes two types of carbon units which have different purposes:

Pending Issuance Units: When a project is validated, these units are issued to demonstrate the quantity (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) of potential future sequestration. Pending Issuance Units will help to keep track of up-front sales and purchases. They can be transferred to a buyer’s account or assigned to a buyer without an account. However, Pending Issuance Units cannot be listed on an exchange or trading platform. They cannot be used, retired or reported. Pending Issuance Units are not guaranteed.

Woodland Carbon Units: When a project is verified, Pending Issuance Units which have been confirmed as sequestered will be converted to Woodland Carbon Units. These units can be considered as full carbon credits and, as such, can be used, retired and reported against an organisation’s emissions. Woodland Carbon Units are guaranteed.

Status of units

Units can have different statuses:

• Active - A unit which is still available for use. It has not been assigned, retired, cancelled or marked not delivered. These are shown on the holdings page on the public view.
• Assigned - A Pending Issuance Unit which has been sold to a buyer who doesn’t have an account. The buyer’s name is tagged to the credit. Assigned units are taken out of circulation but they are not guaranteed. These are shown on the assignments page on the public view.
• Retired - A verified Woodland Carbon Unit which has been used by its owner. It is taken out of circulation and can’t be re-used.
• Not Delivered - A Pending Issuance Unit which has been taken out of circulation because it won’t be delivered. This could be because a verification concludes a project won’t do as well as planned or because a project isn’t verified at all.
• Cancelled - A unit which is removed from the UK Land Carbon Registry because it will be used within another programme. At present there are no cancelled units as it is only possible to use Woodland Carbon Units as voluntary carbon removals units within the UK.

Pending Issuance Units and Woodland Carbon Units only exist in the UK Land Carbon Registry. Ownership can only be transferred between registry account holders. 

Units are assigned a 'vintage' which is the time period in which they are anticipated to be delivered (Pending Issuance Units) or were actually delivered (Woodland Carbon Units). 

Serial numbers

Each unit is allocated a unique serial number that identifies the standard, project location, project ID, vintage dates, credit numbers and the registry it was issued by.

Here’s how to read a serial number:

• Example serial number: WCC-WCU-GB-104000000012345-01012015-31122024-00000001-00000100-SPG
• WCC: A unit issued under the Woodland Carbon Code
• WCU: A Woodland Carbon Unit
• GB: A unit issued from a UK-based project
• 104000000012345: Project Identification number
• 01012015: Vintage start date 01 January 2015
• 31122024: Vintage end date 31 December 2024
• 00000001-00000100: Credit numbers 1 to 100
• SPG: A unit issued by S&P Global

Some of our units were issued when the registry was managed by Market Environmental Registry. They have ‘MER’ instead of ‘SPG’ in the serial number and also have a further extension of ‘-0-P’. ‘0’ means there are no additional certifications and ‘P’ means an ex-post credit.

See our information on how Pending Issuance Units and Woodland Carbon Units can be used and on reporting your emissions and climate action. 

All units, Pending Issuance Units and Woodland Carbon Units, will be visible on the public view of the UK Land Carbon Registry.

Once a project is validated, Pending Issuance Units will be listed in time periods called vintages or monitoring periods (see below) for the lifetime of the project. For groups of projects, units can be issued to each project within the group or to the groups as a whole if the carbon will be sold collectively. In exceptional circumstances, Pending Issuance Units will not be issued. See 2.6 Registry and avoidance of double-counting.

Vintages are determined by the monitoring and verification schedule set out in Woodland Carbon Code guidance. The first vintage is five years from the project start date (the last date of planting) and subsequent vintages are in ten-yearly periods. Special arrangements apply to older projects whose first verification dates differ.

Scottish Forestry owns an account called ‘WCC Buffer Account’. Each project’s buffer contribution will be allocated to this account. The Pending Issuance Units in the buffer account indicate the potential size of the code’s buffer once these units are converted to verified Woodland Carbon Units.

For example, a 100-year project which will remove 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and which allocates 20% of its units to the buffer, might list Pending Issuance Units as shown in Table 1. 

Table 1: Allocation of units to vintages for a project which will remove 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

See registry fees for the cost to list Pending Issuance Units. It is free to issue buffer units.

Pending Issuance Units cannot be sold to individuals.

Once a sale of Pending Issuance Units is agreed, the project developer, retail aggregator or trader shall make clear who the buyer is. This can be done in one of two ways:

• By assigning units to the buyer within the project developer's account. Assignment is a way of demonstrating the sale of a unit without requiring the buyer to have an account on the UK Land Carbon Registry. The buyer cannot choose when to retire or add a comment once the credit is verified.
• By transferring units to the buyer's account. This gives the buyer more flexibility to retire the unit once it's verified. The buyer can retire units at a time which matches their reporting requirements, adding a comment to clarify how they have been used. Both the seller and buyer approve a transfer before any units move account.

The lowest serial numbers in the seller’s account will be transferred.

There is no cost to assign or transfer units to a buyer. 

Converting units

When a project is verified at the end of a vintage period, the number of Pending Issuance Units verified will automatically be converted to verified Woodland Carbon Units once checks on monitoring and verification reports are completed. This applies to Pending Issuance Units allocated to the project (which may have already been sold) as well as those allocated to the WCC buffer account. Units issued as Pending Issuance Units will retain the same serial numbers as Woodland Carbon Units. Pending Issuance Units which are already assigned to a buyer will be automatically retired.

Over-delivery

If verification confirms that more units were delivered than were allocated as Pending Issuance Units for a given vintage, the extra units will be shared proportionally between the project and the buffer (Table 2).

Table 2: Conversion of Pending Issuance Units to Woodland Carbon Units in the case of over delivery

Under-delivery 

If verification confirms that fewer units were delivered than were allocated as Pending Issuance Units for a given vintage, the shortfall is shared proportionally between the project and the buffer. Pending Issuance Units not delivered are marked 'not delivered'. These will have the highest serial numbers (Table 3).

Table 3: Conversion of Pending Issuance Units to Woodland Carbon Units in the case of under delivery

Contracts between buyers and sellers might need to be flexible about the amount delivered, but not the timing. For example:

• Guaranteed (I’ll give you 100 units in year x. If it’s not from my project, I’ll give you some from another Woodland Carbon Code/other project) or
• Unit-contingent (I’ll give you about 100 units by a given year, give or take a certain margin. The buyer will pay for the units that are delivered).

See our template buyer seller agreements.

See registry fees for the cost to convert Pending Issuance Units to Woodland Carbon Units or to issue new Woodland Carbon Units. It is free to convert or issue further buffer units.

Pending Issuance Units shall be verified by the last date of a vintage period, unless there are extenuating circumstances for a delay. Extensions shall be agreed with the Woodland Carbon Code team. They might be granted if, for example:

• You demonstrate you’ve applied to the verifying bodies in good time, but they are unable to process your validation before the deadline
• A verification suggests corrective actions, but they cannot be completed before the deadline due to weather/time of year etc.
• Projects which are geographically close are due to be verified in consecutive years and you would like to verify the two projects together

If a project developer has an agreed extension, the verification extension confirmation will be uploaded to the registry. Carbon units (both Pending Issuance Units and Woodland Carbon Units) can be transferred as normal.

If you do not verify by the last date of the vintage period or any agreed extension:

• All remaining Pending Issuance Units for the duration of the project will be marked not delivered (those owned by the project, those sold and buffer units)
• Any unsold Woodland Carbon Units will be automatically retired
• Woodland Carbon Units (sold and buffer) from previous vintages will remain valid
• The project will remain in the system and be marked 'not delivered’
• No further units can be issued at any time
• Existing buyers can still sell on or retire Woodland Carbon Units held from previous vintages.

Project developers can withdraw from the Woodland Carbon Code and the registry before the end of the project duration if all sold units have been delivered as verified Woodland Carbon Units and only unsold Pending Issuance Units remain. 

In this case, all Woodland Carbon Units will remain valid (both for the project and the buffer) and Pending Issuance Units (unsold and buffer) will be marked not delivered. Future management shall maintain the level of carbon stock that has been sold.

There is no cost to mark Pending Issuance Units not delivered. See making changes to your project.

Only verified Woodland Carbon Units can be used or reported to help compensate for a company’s or individual’s emissions. Read more at 2.7 carbon statements and reporting.

To use a verified Woodland Carbon Unit in the registry, you need to ‘retire’ it (take it out of circulation). You should add a retirement comment (e.g. ‘Retired in 2020 as compensation for 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent of our 2019 emissions. See our annual environmental report 2019’). Retirement is permanent and cannot be reversed.

All retirements are shown on the public view of the UK Land Carbon Registry. There is no cost to retire Woodland Carbon Units.

S&P Global's request for information platform is an anonymous online platform which displays credits that are for sale. Registry account holders can search for and view these credits.

The platform also allows buyers to show their interest in buying credits, including quantities and prices.

Buyers or sellers can send an expression of interest to counter-parties. The platform then enables the two parties to start discussions on the terms of a potential transaction.

The seller decides the price of credits. S&P Global does not provide any information or consultation.

Anyone with a UK Land Carbon Registry account can access the platform. There is no fee to use it.

Project developers

If a project developer wishes to exit the business, it is possible to transfer projects to another project developer or management organisation, sell or retire carbon units then close their account.

However, if a project developer abandons its UK Land Carbon Registry account(s) without arrangements for the ongoing management of units by another organisation (or its agreement with S&P Global is otherwise terminated), then:

• All Pending Issuance Units listed for that project developer will be marked not delivered regardless of which account holders may be holding the Pending Issuance Units at the time
• Any Woodland Carbon Units still held by the project developer will be transferred to a suspension account. If the account is not claimed within five years, the credits will be retired
• Any Woodland Carbon Units already received by a buyer will remain valid in the buyer’s account

Buyers

If a corporate end user or trading organisation is acquired by another organisation, units can be transferred to the purchasing company’s account. 

If a corporate end user or trader abandons its UK Land Carbon Registry account(s) without arrangements for the ongoing management of its units (or its agreement with S&P Global is otherwise terminated), it’s account will be marked ‘retention’. All its units will be put on hold until instructions are received from the liquidator or administrator.

If no instruction is received within five years, the account will be marked ‘closed’. Any remaining Pending Issuance Units will be retired on conversion and Woodland Carbon Units will be retired.