Our Approach
Methods
Each EldHollow review evaluates a carbon project against a structured framework of benchmarks organized across five scoring categories. Benchmarks are weighted by importance, and scores reflect both the available documentation and the underlying geospatial, ecological, and socioeconomic evidence. Where key project documents are not available, we identify them explicitly and note how their absence affects the score. We never assume best-case answers for undisclosed information.
Our scoring benchmarks are designed to objectively compare carbon offset projects against each other. Every project is assessed under the same series of benchmarks, and clients can weigh benchmarks more heavily than others in order for the final score to best represent their values.
Scoring Framework
Social Harms, Benefits & Durability
Local communities are often the backbone of carbon projects, and how a project interacts with community members can determine the success of the project over time. Local traditions, societal structures, and interpersonal relationships influence forest management practices differently around the world. Projects must be flexible in how they engage with communities so the project is equitable and promotes social justice. EldHollow's quality benchmarks assess how the project is implemented regarding benefit sharing, community input on project design, feedback loops, local customs, and more to ensure the project adheres to a high standard of fairness and social durability.
Ecological Harms, Benefits & Durability
Forest ecosystems vary considerably around the world, and how they should be managed depends on local climatic conditions, topography, the forest condition, notable pests and diseases, and other factors. Some projects are located in areas susceptible to intense natural disturbances such as hurricanes or fires, while others may be in arid climates or located on degraded soils. All these factors, including how the project manages for them, can influence project durability. EldHollow's quality benchmarks assess how the project is implemented regarding silvicultural practices, species selection, preparing for potential forest disturbances, forest operations, and more to ensure the project's forest management adheres to a high standard of scientific rigor and ecological durability.
Additionality & Project Baseline
EldHollow generates its own baseline using an end-to-end geospatial pipeline to compare against the project's baseline, offering a quantitative assessment of project additionality. Additionality is the most important driver of project crediting, but it is one of the most difficult aspects of project design for developers to quantify and for reviewers to assess. Each protocol uses a different methodology to determine project baselines, and protocols often allow developers to customize their own baseline approach. This flexibility allows projects to consider bespoke solutions to local conditions at the expense of consistency across protocols, registries, and the broader market, which makes determining the “best” solution a challenge. EldHollow assesses project additionality across three axes: 1) regulatory additionality, 2) financial additionality, and 3) the project’s baseline.
Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting & Verification
Forest measurements and how they are converted to biomass are key drivers of project crediting. Most projects measure trees by hand and convert those measurements to biomass using allometric equations. A growing number of projects use a combination of remote sensing and traditional forest measurements to determine carbon stocks, while some projects rely entirely on remote sensing. All methods have strengths and weaknesses, which also applies to predicting ex-ante carbon stocks into the future. EldHollow assesses a project’s forest inventory methodology, allometric equations, tree growth equations, and, if used, its remote sensing model to determine the project’s MMRV quality and conservativeness.
Leakage
Leakage is the most difficult aspect of project design for developers to quantify accurately. Market leakage in particular is enigmatic and can be influenced by regional and global forces that change dynamically through time. There is a small, but growing, body of scientific literature that attempts to study drivers of market leakage and quantify market leakage from carbon projects. These studies, however, are often too generalized for projects or reviewers to be taken verbatim. EldHollow’s quality benchmarks assess how the project quantifies leakage relative to the most up-to-date scientific literature and whether the project has robust plans to monitor for, and prevent, leakage.
Geospatial Analysis
EldHollow utilizes an end-to-end geospatial pipeline to assess project additionality that includes various satellite imagery sources, bioclimatic variables, local and space-born LiDAR, roads, mill locations, and more. We support other scoring categories with analyses derived from the Global Land Analysis & Discovery forest canopy loss product, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and various other publicly available datasets. Our methods are constantly evolving as new science and data become available.