Kyle Arvisais
State of the Hollow - Launch
April 30, 2026
An introduction to EldHollow LLC and where we fit in the forest carbon offset review industry.
Today, I am excited to announce the launch of EldHollow LLC, a new company focused on reviewing forest carbon offset projects.
Forest carbon offset projects are complex. We are all aware of the challenges that project developers face in adhering to methodologies, engaging stakeholders, ensuring social and environmental justice, and managing limited financial resources. Implementing a carbon project can take years, and the rapidly changing landscape of nature-based projects can render them outdated by the time they begin. Meanwhile, buyers must navigate this dynamic environment filled with new and existing projects, methodologies, and technologies, which can be overwhelming and create uncertainty about which credits to purchase.
Adding to this complexity is the role of the project reviewer.
Many companies provide reviews of forest carbon offset projects by offering public ratings, a ratings platform, or bespoke services. While they all strive to determine what constitutes a high-quality project, ratings of the same project can vary significantly between companies. Sometimes a company may change a project's rating without clear explanations, which can add to the confusion rather than clarify it.
There are four main reasons why this can be the case:
1. Project review criteria are often subjective. It's uncommon for a reviewing agency to have clear, concise, repeatable review criteria that employees or contractors can follow that result in consistent review outcomes from person to person. Typically, these criteria are phrased in a way that allows for varying interpretations of project quality based on the same data. This can lead to disagreements between team members, misunderstandings with project developers, and published review outcomes that do not reflect the views of the team members involved in the assessment.
2. Project scores are inherently subjective. While this point aligns with the first, it warrants its own place on this list. When a project receives a “B+” score, what does that signify? How does it compare to another project that earns an “A-”? From the reviewer’s standpoint, who ultimately determines the final score? What criteria are used to differentiate between a score of 2 and a score of 3? Translating a project score is fundamental to the review process, but that rating can feel less meaningful if it isn’t directly linked to the review content.
3. Project scores do not always translate to buyer values. For instance, if a buyer sees a project that scores an “A”, but they value social harms, benefits, and environmental justice over anything else, how can they determine if the project aligns with their values just by looking at the score? Similarly, if a buyer cares about something specific like project benefit sharing, how does the score reflect that attribute? While project scores are typically presented as general indicators of quality, clients often require more detailed insights into how their values are represented in the score.
4. Project reviewers may lack information. Sometimes projects are in an early developmental stage and have not finalized their methodologies. In other instances, the project developer does not upload key information to a public registry or provide the reviewer with documentation they request. Consequently, project reviewers often must review a project without complete information, which can lead to misunderstandings about the project’s quality or, in the worst case, lead to incorrect conclusions. At the end of the day, nobody knows the project better than the project developers, but they must willing to share key documentation with third parties to ensure that reviews are as fair and accurate as possible.
I have had the privilege of working for three well-known companies that offer project reviews to clients. I learned new things at each of them, contributed to their review criteria, and engaged with clients to learn what aspects of project quality are important to them. I’ve traveled to different parts of the world to better understand carbon projects on the ground and met with local stakeholders, project developers, tribal chiefs, and community members. Each opportunity to review a project has taught me something new about the carbon space, and through those learnings I decided to launch EldHollow LLC.
At EldHollow, we take a different approach to reviewing forest carbon offset projects. Our criteria consist of predefined benchmarks that assess project quality. Each benchmark is assigned a weight that determines how much that benchmark impacts the project’s score. Think of this system as like taking exam. The more points a question is assigned, the more that question influences the exam score. That is how EldHollow’s scoring system works. Scores are presented as broad categories like “Overall Score” and “Carbon Score”, as well narrower categories such as “Social Harms, Benefits, and Durability”, “Additionality and Project Baseline”, etc. In the reviews, we display full benchmark tables showing which benchmarks projects meet and which ones they don’t along with explanations for why a project did or did not meet a specific benchmark.
Furthermore, users have the option to customize how projects are scored by adjusting the weights of benchmarks or entire categories of benchmarks. This allows users to build their values directly into project scoring, so the reviews reflect their individual needs. These features aim to achieve consistency, transparency, and increased objectivity of the review process while allowing users to better understand how project scores relate to their values.
In addition, EldHollow does not have financial relationships with project developers, registries, brokers, or the supply markets. We believe those relationships introduce conflicts of interest to the review process, and we want our work to be dependable and trustworthy.
I invite you to join in and create an account. Signing up is free, and the first three project reviews have been made available without purchase as examples of our work.
Thank you and see you soon.
-Kyle
Forest carbon offset projects are complex. We are all aware of the challenges that project developers face in adhering to methodologies, engaging stakeholders, ensuring social and environmental justice, and managing limited financial resources. Implementing a carbon project can take years, and the rapidly changing landscape of nature-based projects can render them outdated by the time they begin. Meanwhile, buyers must navigate this dynamic environment filled with new and existing projects, methodologies, and technologies, which can be overwhelming and create uncertainty about which credits to purchase.
Adding to this complexity is the role of the project reviewer.
Many companies provide reviews of forest carbon offset projects by offering public ratings, a ratings platform, or bespoke services. While they all strive to determine what constitutes a high-quality project, ratings of the same project can vary significantly between companies. Sometimes a company may change a project's rating without clear explanations, which can add to the confusion rather than clarify it.
There are four main reasons why this can be the case:
1. Project review criteria are often subjective. It's uncommon for a reviewing agency to have clear, concise, repeatable review criteria that employees or contractors can follow that result in consistent review outcomes from person to person. Typically, these criteria are phrased in a way that allows for varying interpretations of project quality based on the same data. This can lead to disagreements between team members, misunderstandings with project developers, and published review outcomes that do not reflect the views of the team members involved in the assessment.
2. Project scores are inherently subjective. While this point aligns with the first, it warrants its own place on this list. When a project receives a “B+” score, what does that signify? How does it compare to another project that earns an “A-”? From the reviewer’s standpoint, who ultimately determines the final score? What criteria are used to differentiate between a score of 2 and a score of 3? Translating a project score is fundamental to the review process, but that rating can feel less meaningful if it isn’t directly linked to the review content.
3. Project scores do not always translate to buyer values. For instance, if a buyer sees a project that scores an “A”, but they value social harms, benefits, and environmental justice over anything else, how can they determine if the project aligns with their values just by looking at the score? Similarly, if a buyer cares about something specific like project benefit sharing, how does the score reflect that attribute? While project scores are typically presented as general indicators of quality, clients often require more detailed insights into how their values are represented in the score.
4. Project reviewers may lack information. Sometimes projects are in an early developmental stage and have not finalized their methodologies. In other instances, the project developer does not upload key information to a public registry or provide the reviewer with documentation they request. Consequently, project reviewers often must review a project without complete information, which can lead to misunderstandings about the project’s quality or, in the worst case, lead to incorrect conclusions. At the end of the day, nobody knows the project better than the project developers, but they must willing to share key documentation with third parties to ensure that reviews are as fair and accurate as possible.
I have had the privilege of working for three well-known companies that offer project reviews to clients. I learned new things at each of them, contributed to their review criteria, and engaged with clients to learn what aspects of project quality are important to them. I’ve traveled to different parts of the world to better understand carbon projects on the ground and met with local stakeholders, project developers, tribal chiefs, and community members. Each opportunity to review a project has taught me something new about the carbon space, and through those learnings I decided to launch EldHollow LLC.
At EldHollow, we take a different approach to reviewing forest carbon offset projects. Our criteria consist of predefined benchmarks that assess project quality. Each benchmark is assigned a weight that determines how much that benchmark impacts the project’s score. Think of this system as like taking exam. The more points a question is assigned, the more that question influences the exam score. That is how EldHollow’s scoring system works. Scores are presented as broad categories like “Overall Score” and “Carbon Score”, as well narrower categories such as “Social Harms, Benefits, and Durability”, “Additionality and Project Baseline”, etc. In the reviews, we display full benchmark tables showing which benchmarks projects meet and which ones they don’t along with explanations for why a project did or did not meet a specific benchmark.
Furthermore, users have the option to customize how projects are scored by adjusting the weights of benchmarks or entire categories of benchmarks. This allows users to build their values directly into project scoring, so the reviews reflect their individual needs. These features aim to achieve consistency, transparency, and increased objectivity of the review process while allowing users to better understand how project scores relate to their values.
In addition, EldHollow does not have financial relationships with project developers, registries, brokers, or the supply markets. We believe those relationships introduce conflicts of interest to the review process, and we want our work to be dependable and trustworthy.
I invite you to join in and create an account. Signing up is free, and the first three project reviews have been made available without purchase as examples of our work.
Thank you and see you soon.
-Kyle