The market for carbon offsets must be scaled up globally to make a sufficient dent in climate change, according to a new report that lays out a path toward a high-quality global carbon market.
What does any of this mean? Let’s take you through it.
Why is this report important?
The report was released by the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, led by United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action Mark Carney. It lays out principles and recommendations for bolstering and regulating — on a global scale — the market for voluntary carbon offsets, an increasingly popular tool for companies trying to neutralize some of their emissions of climate-warming carbon.
What are ‘offsets’ again?
The idea behind offsets is this: A company (or government or individual) can buy or trade a “credit” worth 1 metric ton of carbon, representing a portion of their emissions that they’re trying to neutralize by reducing carbon somewhere else. So revenue from that credit would go either toward the protection of a prescribed area of forest, for example, or toward an equivalent amount of carbon sequestered by carbon-capture technology, an as-yet underdeveloped method for removing carbon from the atmosphere. (More on that later.)
Read full article at Conservation International