Carbon Credit Registry Monitor

Track public carbon-credit registry activity across Gold Standard and Verra VCS. This Actor returns normalized, change-tagged records for projects, credit issuances, and credit retirements so carbon-market teams can build watchlists, due-diligence feeds, and market-intelligence alerts without stitching registry data together manually.

What this Actor is useful for

• Monitor new or updated carbon projects in Gold Standard and Verra VCS.
• Track recent credit issuances by project theme, country, methodology, or keyword.
• Track retirements/cancellations and public retirement metadata where available.
• Build repeatable watchlists for themes like cookstove, biochar, mangrove, REDD, renewable, or specific project names.
• Feed carbon-market intelligence pipelines, ESG research workflows, broker watchlists, and Slack/webhook alerts.

Supported sources

Registry	Projects	Issuances	Retirements	Notes
Gold Standard	yes	yes	yes	Credit-block endpoint supports broad or keyword queries.
Verra VCS	yes	yes	yes	Credit-event queries require searchTerms to avoid slow unfiltered asset searches.

Quick start examples

1. Monitor credit events for a theme

Best first run if you want market activity, not just project metadata.

{
  "registries": ["gold_standard", "verra_vcs"],
  "recordTypes": ["issuances", "retirements"],
  "maxItemsPerRegistry": 50,
  "searchTerms": "cookstove",
  "onlyChanges": true,
  "compareWithPreviousRun": true,
  "stateKey": "cookstove-credit-events"
}

2. Monitor new/updated projects

{
  "registries": ["gold_standard", "verra_vcs"],
  "recordTypes": ["projects"],
  "maxItemsPerRegistry": 100,
  "countries": "India, Brazil, Kenya",
  "projectTypes": "reforestation, renewable, biochar",
  "onlyChanges": true,
  "compareWithPreviousRun": true,
  "stateKey": "project-watchlist-india-brazil-kenya"
}

3. Gold Standard retirement feed

Gold Standard retirement queries can run without searchTerms.

{
  "registries": ["gold_standard"],
  "recordTypes": ["retirements"],
  "maxItemsPerRegistry": 100,
  "onlyChanges": true,
  "compareWithPreviousRun": true,
  "stateKey": "gold-standard-retirements"
}

Input fields

Field	Description
registries	gold_standard, verra_vcs, or both.
recordTypes	projects, issuances, retirements, or a combination.
maxItemsPerRegistry	Maximum matching records per registry and record type.
countries	Optional comma-separated country names.
statuses	Optional comma-separated status names, e.g. ISSUED, RETIRED, LISTED.
projectTypes	Optional comma-separated terms matched against project type / methodology.
searchTerms	Optional comma-separated terms matched against project names, IDs, serials, retirement metadata, and descriptions. Required for Verra issuance/retirement queries.
onlyChanges	Skip unchanged records. Recommended for scheduled monitors.
emitUnchanged	Emit unchanged records too. Useful for first-run exports and debugging.
compareWithPreviousRun	Persist fingerprints in the key-value store and mark each record as new, updated, unchanged, or missing_from_current_run.
stateKey	Key-value store key for persisted state. Use a different key for each watchlist/filter set.

Output

Dataset items include normalized fields where available:

Field	Meaning
registry	Registry name.
source	Source feed, e.g. goldstandard_issuances, verra_vcs_retirements.
record_type	project, issuance, or retirement.
record_id	Stable Actor-level ID used for change detection.
change_type	new, updated, unchanged, or missing_from_current_run.
project_id, project_name	Registry project identifiers.
status, country, project_type, methodology	Normalized project/credit metadata.
quantity	Number of credits in an issuance/retirement record.
serial_number	Registry credit serial number or range.
vintage, vintage_start, vintage_end	Vintage/monitoring period details.
issuance_date, retirement_date	Event dates where available.
retirement_beneficiary, retirement_reason, retirement_details	Public retirement metadata where available.
source_url	Registry project/source URL.
raw	Original registry response object for audit/debugging.

The run summary is written to the default key-value store under OUTPUT and includes fetched/emitted counts, counts by source, counts by record type, filters used, and generation time.

Change detection behavior

This Actor stores fingerprints in the default key-value store under stateKey. On later runs:

• New records are emitted as new.
• Changed records are emitted as updated.
• Disappearing records are emitted as missing_from_current_run.
• Unchanged records are skipped when onlyChanges is true.

For scheduled monitors, use a stable stateKey per watchlist. If you change filters but keep the same stateKey, the Actor may mark previously seen records as missing.

Source caveats

• Registry schemas and frontend APIs can change.
• Verra VCS credit-event queries are scoped by searchTerms because the unfiltered public asset search is too slow/unreliable for production runs.
• Gold Standard retirement_date is derived from public credit-block timestamps where a dedicated retirement date is not exposed.
• This Actor is for monitoring and research. Validate source URLs before using results for financial, legal, or compliance decisions.