Market
Vintage
Also known as: Carbon credit vintage, vintage year
TL;DR
The calendar year in which a carbon credit's emissions reduction or removal occurred — distinct from the year it was issued or sold.
Full explainer
A credit's vintage is the calendar year during which the underlying emissions reduction or removal took place. For an avoidance project (e.g. REDD+), the vintage is the year the avoided deforestation happened against the baseline; for a removal project (e.g. ARR), it's the year of measured biomass growth. Vintage is distinct from both the issuance year (when Verra or SRN-PPI minted the credit) and the retirement year (when the buyer used it).
Vintage matters because (a) older vintages generally command lower prices, reflecting concerns about whether the original reduction is still genuinely additional; (b) ICVCM CCP-eligibility and CORSIA eligibility are vintage-bracketed (e.g. CORSIA's First Phase accepts credits only with 2016+ vintages); (c) many corporate buyers prefer credits with vintages close to the year of the emissions they're offsetting. KarbonLens surfaces vintage on the issuance table of each project page and aggregates them on the /projects/by-vintage hub.
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