Gold Standard admits first traditional political risk insurer to CORSIA credit market
Gold Standard has approved a fifth insurance policy for use by carbon project developers seeking eligibility under the first and second phases of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), marking the entry of the first conventional political risk insurer into the scheme. The registry added the Sovereign Corresponding Adjustment Revocation & Enforced Withdrawal policy, known as SCREW, offered by UK-based Blenheim Partnerships Limited, to its list of approved covers.
The approval follows an independent review by Howden, the insurance intermediary appointed by Gold Standard in 2025 to assess policies against the registry’s criteria for guarding against double counting. Under CORSIA rules, credits used by international airlines must avoid being claimed twice — once by the host country toward its own climate targets and again by the aviation sector. Gold Standard developed two routes for demonstrating compliance: proof that a host government has applied a “corresponding adjustment” under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, or a Deed of Undertaking backed by an approved insurance policy committing to replace any credits later found to be double-counted.
Blenheim’s policy joins four other approved covers: the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency’s breach of contract insurance, approved in December 2024; Artio MGA Services’ CORSIA Adjustment Cover; CFC Underwriting’s CORSIA Guarantee Insurance; and Oka, The Carbon Insurance Company’s Corresponding Adjustment Protect policy, underwritten through a Lloyd’s of London syndicate. Since the first private insurance policies were approved in October 2025, three project developers have used insurance-backed guarantees to secure CORSIA labelling for credits from projects based in Rwanda and Tanzania.
Gold Standard said the addition of a traditional political risk underwriter should expand the overall insurance capacity available to developers at a time when the volume of CORSIA-eligible credits remains well below projected demand for the scheme’s first compliance phase, which runs from 2024 to 2026. Sarah Leugers, Chief Growth Officer at Gold Standard, and Ed Parker, Senior Underwriter for Special Risks at Blenheim, both welcomed the move as widening the pool of underwriting capacity supporting supply into the compliance market.
Gold Standard also confirmed it has launched a Request for Proposals to review its process for assessing insurance policies used under CORSIA, with outcomes from that review expected ahead of the first annual reassessment of approved policies this autumn. Gold Standard was approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization to supply eligible emissions units for CORSIA’s pilot phase (2021–2023), first phase (2024–2026) and the first part of the second phase (2027–2029).
The development is significant for compliance market supply chains because political and sovereign risk has been repeatedly cited by analysts as a structural constraint on scaling CORSIA-eligible credit volumes, particularly in jurisdictions where governments have been slow or inconsistent in applying corresponding adjustments under the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 framework. Broader insurance capacity is intended to give developers in a wider range of host countries a viable route to market.
