Noun
Buffer pools are a risk mitigation mechanism in the voluntary carbon market. Carbon storage projects must contribute some of the credits they produce to their carbon standard’s buffer pool. These buffer pool credits cannot be sold or retired and instead are held to insure projects against unexpected carbon storage reversals.
💡To Note:
If there is a carbon storage reversal, like part of a forest burning down, these ‘extra’ credits can be retired in place of sold credits whose impact would have otherwise been invalidated by the reversal.
The buffer pool can also be used by other projects - so it's a registry wide insurance - if the entire forest burns down, other project's buffer pool will contribute so that YOUR carbon credits are still safe.
Different projects, methodologies and registries have their own buffer pool requirements, but a percentage of total credits is common.
Generally, a high quality project, using a robust methodology, registered under a high quality registry, will err on the side of caution and over-allocate towards buffer pools.
