What are the fees for Land Use and Forestry (LUF) project certification?

What are the fees for Land Use and Forestry (LUF) project certification?

  • Preliminary Review: USD 3,500 paid to SustainCERT
  • Validation audit: fee depends on each Validation and Verification Body (VVB). This must be discussed between the project developer and the selected VVB. 
  • Project Design Certification: USD 1,500 paid to SustainCERT
  • Verification audit: fee depends on each VVB. This must be discussed between the project developer and the selected VVB. 
  • Performance Certification: USD 1,500 paid to SustainCERT
  • Optional: Soil Carbon Review: USD 500 paid to SustainCERT. This is optional and meant for afforestation/reforestation (A/R) projects that wish to claim verified emission reductions (VERs) from soil carbon. This step does not require an independent third-party audit.
  • First Credit Issuance: $.30 cents a ton
  • Subsequent Credit issuance: $.30 cents a ton
  • Optional: New Area Certification Fee: $1500
  • Smallholder and Microscale LUF projects follow the normal LUF costs, except that these may use individual auditors instead of VVBs up to 100k VERs issued. Once this threshold is reached, then a project must do the following verification using an accredited VVB after which the project becomes eligible again to use an individual auditor for the next 100k VERs issued (and the cycle repeats)
  • Preliminary/Design Certification/Performance Certification Review is still done by SustainCERT and validation is still done by an accredited VVB. The individual auditor is used for design certification and performance certification validation/auditing. 

Overall project costs include, but are not limited to land lease or land rent, field labor and overhead management, supplies, tools, tractors and other farm equipment, road maintenance, land preparation, exotic species removal, seeds or seed collection (i.e. nursery fees), planting, fertilizing, gas, water, rent for buildings or storage, staff housing, transportation, species inventory, carbon baseline estimates and permanent tree tagging for baseline monitoring, labor to establish and monitor permanent sample plots, species thinning, biodiversity monitoring, fire management, weed control, exotic animal control, fencing, drought management, carbon project consultants (and their travel fees), GS review fees, verifiers, certification/issuance fees, project boundary mapping and other mapping, business plan and financial model creation, carbon accounting, business accounting, Local Stakeholder consultation fees and ongoing grievance tracking and management fees, consulting fees to verify your additionality report, baseline estimates, and C02e certification estimates, business permits, business licenses, website and computing fees, business taxes, insurance, land or other property taxes, legal fees, and brokerage license fees (where applicable) to name a few things.



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