JAL becomes the first commercial airline to retire large-scale Gold Standard CORSIA credits

Japan Airlines has become the first commercial airline to make a large-scale retirement of Gold Standard carbon credits in respect of Phase 1 of ICAO’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). A total of 180,000 credits, known as Eligible Emissions Units (EEUs), were retired by Shell on behalf of the airline to meet its Phase 1 obligations. A separate, smaller retirement was made by US-based Skyservice Business Aviation in February. Gold Standard said the transactions showed CORSIA compliance activity “is now substantively underway”. The retired credits were sourced from CORSIA-eligible cookstove projects in Malawi and Tanzania, which support communities’ access to cleaner cooking technologies, so improving lives and livelihoods while reducing pressure on forests.

“We are proud to support Japan Airlines in achieving this CORSIA milestone with high-quality Gold Standard credits,” said Nick Osborne, VP Global Carbon and Environmental Products Trading at Shell. “As airlines advance their compliance efforts, we continue to draw on our global trading expertise and work with a portfolio of credible project developers to bring CORSIA EEUs to market.”

A total of 130,000 credits were retired from activities under a biomass energy conservation programme (GS11677) in Malawi developed by Hestian Innovation. The remaining 50,000 credits were retired from the ‘Efficient and Clean Cooking for Households’ programme (GS11732) in Tanzania developed by BURN, a manufacturer and supplier of cookstoves. The country has a National Clean Cooking Strategy 2024-2034 in place involving government, the energy sector and other stakeholders that aims to ensure 80% of Tanzanians use clean cooking solutions by 2034.

“This retirement does more than reduce or remove 180,000 tonnes of emissions from the atmosphere. It reflects thousands of households getting access to reliable and efficient fuel, women reclaiming time previously tending fires and families breathing cleaner air at home,” commented Margaret Kim, CEO at Gold Standard. “Frameworks like CORSIA help channel climate finance to projects that change daily life in visible ways.”

“Frameworks like CORSIA help channel climate finance to projects that change daily life in visible ways.”
Margaret Kim, Gold Standard

Gold Standard has so far labelled nearly two million credits as eligible for use under Phase 1, which it says reflects recent positive developments on the supply side and continued expansion of eligible volumes. It expects further retirements throughout 2026 and 2027 as airlines prepare to meet the Phase 1 compliance deadline in January 2028.

The Geneva-based climate action NGO recently published a guide that sets out how project developers can receive CORSIA labels, including all of the relevant processes under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Once credits are labelled as eligible, buyers can easily locate them using the relevant filters on the Gold Standard Impact Registry, a publicly accessible platform for issuing, tracking and retiring Gold Standard carbon credits.

Photo (Airbus): Japan Airlines A350-900

Christopher Surgenor
Editor