The Gold Standard’s 2024 Annual Report marks the final year of its 2020–2025 strategy, highlighting major achievements in climate action and sustainable development.
In 2024, Gold Standard concluded the final year of its 2020–2025 strategic cycle, marking a period of significant growth, innovation and impact.
Shared value creation, the estimated economic contribution benefits beyond emission reductions that projects generate, from Gold Standard-certified projects reached $13.8 billion for the year. This brings the cumulative total to $59.5 billion, with projections indicating we are on track to achieve our goal of creating $100bn by 2030.
We verified 1,281 contributions across the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in our project portfolio, an 18% increase on 2023. Since our founding in 2003 Gold Standard-certified projects have amassed 8,298 verified contributions in total, across all 17 SDGs.
Our project portfolio grew to 3,848 across 110 countries, with a record 621 new projects registered in a single year. Community service project category remained the in the lead, accounting for 64% of the overall portfolio. We saw notable growth in forestry and waste management categories, and the first engineered carbon dioxide removal project to start our certification process was registered.
Gold Standard-certified projects issued 84 million carbon credits in 2024, up 35% from 2023, and retired 35 million, up 21% from 2023, reflecting increased trust in the standard’s integrity amid market uncertainty.
Supporting this growth, we made progress on digital transformation with a new advanced assurance platform, helping projects to deliver verified impact more efficiently while maintaining high integrity. Additionally, we developed a digital SDG Impact Tool making it easier for project developers to report the SDG impact of their projects.
We released new standard documents and impact quantification methodologies supporting the development of projects across the blue carbon, low-carbon agriculture, shipping and geological storage categories.
We continued to play a pivotal role in shaping international carbon markets, contributing to the operationalisation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and supporting governments with capacity development. We received recognition from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM).
To support the continued growth of the organisation, we took steps to strengthen our governance and risk management framework. An enhanced and robust structure was developed to ensure accountability, integrity and resilience as the organisation scales its impact.
Download the report to read about the highlights of our innovative work across carbon markets, corporate climate action and more.