A Guide to Our Due Diligence Framework
At Senken, we are dedicated to ensuring risk-free carbon credit purchases by thoroughly vetting all climate projects through a comprehensive due diligence process.
Our approach guarantees that selected projects not only meet their carbon reduction and removal claims but also adhere to the latest scientific findings. By setting standards beyond CO2 reduction—emphasising both environmental and social outcomes—our assessments significantly reduces investment risk while enhancing the impact and credibility of carbon credit purchases.
Our due diligence is powered by custom AI models designed to minimise human error and highlight critical project factors throughout the initial screening. Each project’s documentation then undergoes thorough review by our in-house climate scientists and is further validated by our external science advisory team.
In this article, we’ll walk you through Senken’s five-stage vetting protocol, showcasing how our rigorous, holistic evaluation process allows us to offer low risk and high impact projects.
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Climate Action, Backed by Certainty
Our Five-Stage Vetting Protocol
Leading with transparency and integrity, our due diligence process has set such rigorous standards that less than 5% of projects successfully pass our vetting process and reach final approval for listing on the Senken Marketplace.
Our multi-layered vetting protocol enables our in-house experts to assess everything from basic carbon claim requirements to reputational and compliance risks.
This comprehensive evaluation allows us to identify and mitigate all potential risk factors, ultimately increasing confidence in the selected projects. To ensure every relevant aspect of project quality is thoroughly examined, our due diligence process follows five key stages:
How Does It Work?
The following guide provides a step-by-step overview of each stage and shows how our review process allows us to select only low-risk projects.
Each project must meet the requirements across all five phases and is evaluated on a scale of up to 25 points. Depending on the complexity of the subject, each phase consists of various sub-requirements designed to gather all the necessary information for the final assessment of the project as a whole. This results in a highly detailed review process, encompassing over 60 requirements in total that must be fulfilled.
01 - Basic Project Details
In this first stage, we thoroughly evaluate the project's core elements, such as its standards, registry, methodology, exact location, and other critical details. This stage is essential as it lays the foundation for the entire vetting process, ensuring the project meets the fundamental criteria required for issuing high-quality credits.
These basic requirements are non-negotiable, and a project must fully satisfy them to be considered as part of our offering.
02 - Evaluation of Carbon Claims
We begin by assessing the "business-as-usual" scenario, which defines the baseline for measuring the project's impact. This baseline reflects what would have happened if the project had not been implemented. Using historical national data and geospatial imagery, we compare conditions before and after the project to estimate its effectiveness. If the project provides all necessary information, we can determine whether it has exceeded the baseline, confirming whether it has avoided or removed more CO2 than would have occurred naturally—this is how we measure Additionality.
Our in-house AI model plays a crucial role in this assessment. It ensures that emissions reduction calculations consider all relevant factors and that the data aligns with the project’s scale. This involves reviewing the Climate Benefit Equation and supporting data to verify the accuracy of the reported emissions reductions.
Next, we assess whether the project’s impact is permanent or temporary. We examine whether the project developer has accounted for long-term risks, such as natural disasters (e.g., wildfires, flooding) or political instability (e.g., corruption, national unrest). Additionally, we evaluate whether the project's activities might inadvertently lead to carbon emissions elsewhere (Leakage).
After reviewing all this information, we can accurately measure the project's Permanence, Leakage, and overall Climate Impact, allowing us to proceed to the next stage of evaluation.
03 - Beyond Carbon
In the third stage, we assess the project's broader impact beyond Carbon Dioxide reductions. We evaluate how well the project developer measures and reports these impacts and whether the reporting is appropriate for the project's size and scope.
For example, we examine the project's effects on the surrounding environment, including water table levels, coastal erosion, and soil quality. We also assess the impact on local and surrounding biodiversity, considering factors like noise, habitat enhancement, and the risk of chemical releases.
This stage also focuses on civil society, analysing how income from carbon credits is shared between project developers and local stakeholders, and whether the project contributes to local education and capacity-building efforts.
Together with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), these metrics provide a comprehensive understanding of the project's co-benefits.
04 - Reporting Processes
In this stage, we evaluate the project's methods for data measurement, focusing on whether they are supported by an external Digital Measuring, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV) partner or rely on internal expertise. Particular attention is given to data collection beyond CO2, including the previously mentioned environmental and social factors.
This assessment ensures that the project gathers reliable, transparent data and is well-positioned to generate credits that exceed standard practices.
05 - Compliance & Reputation
The final stage, Compliance & Reputation, is essential to ensuring that each project upholds the highest integrity and quality standards. Although it comes at the end, a full score in this stage is required for project approval, just as it is in the initial Project Details stage.
Compliance involves verifying that the project meets leading Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) requirements, such as the ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), and complies with upcoming environmental regulations, including Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the European CSRD.
We also conduct thorough background checks on the project and its developer, reviewing press releases and evaluations by external rating agencies. This helps us address any potential risks and ensures the project is positioned to produce high-quality, high-integrity credits, minimising the likelihood of unforeseen issues.
To summarise...
Our vetting process begins by gathering essential project details and ensuring they meet fundamental requirements. We then assess whether the project genuinely avoids or removes the carbon emissions it claims, and evaluate its broader impact beyond CO2. Once the project’s impact is clear, we review how these impacts are measured, and finally, conduct a thorough examination of the project’s compliance with quality standards and its overall reputation.
Throughout the process, each project is evaluated against over 60 criteria, which are regularly updated to reflect the latest scientific, financial, and regulatory developments. This ensures that only projects meeting our rigorous standards for quality, integrity, and impact potential are included in our final selection. The projects we accept not only promise significant results, but also pose minimal risks from both an investment and impact perspective.
To further illustrate our approach, we’ve included a practical example of our scoring process, along with a detailed explanation of the criteria used.
The Scoring System
Each sub-requirement is scored as follows: 0 if the requirement is not met, 0.5 if it is partially met, and 1 if fully met. To streamline evaluation, the total score is calculated out of 25, with each stage weighted equally at 5 points.
For a project to be accepted into our offering, it must:
1. Achieve a full score in Stage 1 (Project Description) and Stage 5 (Compliance & Reputation)
2. Attain at least 15 out of 25 in the overall score
The closer a project’s score is to 25, the higher it will rank in our evaluation pipeline. Projects scoring below 15 are not automatically disqualified but will undergo further review to determine whether they have the potential to generate high-quality credits in the future or are exposed to risks that may compromise their overall quality.
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