COMMENT: Transparency holds the key to a $100 billion opportunity
Today’s voluntary carbon market (VCM) and the use of carbon credits to support net zero are at a crossroads. Embracing transparency offers a way forward, argues Tommy Ricketts of BeZero Carbon.
Read MoreCOMMENT: What will rising inflation do to the voluntary carbon market?
While higher inflation and slower economic growth may have short term temporary negative impacts on carbon credit prices, there are several structural reasons why we believe VCM credits are likely to remain resistant to long-term price declines and are in fact more likely to continue to rise in the medium to long-term, argue Respira’s CEO and co-founder Ana Haurie and advisor Joel Krueger.
Read MoreCOMMENT: A fistful of offsets: How the (wild) west was won
Critics comparing the voluntary carbon market to the wild west are missing the point and risk undermining decades of progress on climate change, argues Renat Heuberger, CEO and co-founder of South Pole.
Read MoreCOMMENT: ART board statement regarding the integrity of HFLD credits
The risks of non-additionality of conservatively-issued High Forest, Low Deforestation carbon credits pale in comparison to the risks of losing the world’s remaining expanses of intact forests, argues the board of ART TREES crediting programme in response to recent views that such credits should not be allowed for use to offset emissions by airlines under CORSIA because they are not additional.
Read MoreCOMMENT: Are we missing the point of offsets?
The landscape for voluntary carbon offset types today is complex, with many buyers in a state of “analysis paralysis”. We need to think about the implications of a company using a carbon offset while observing the key principles that make offsetting a powerful tool, argues Lauren Mechak, Director, Program Development at ClimeCo.
Read MoreCOMMENT: Restricting market access will damage the EU ETS
EU institutions, stakeholders and experts agree that the EU’s carbon market should serve as the centrepiece of Europe’s decarbonisation efforts. To reach enhanced climate ambition for 2030, the EU needs a well-functioning carbon market fostering cost-efficient emission reductions. However, this role has just been cast into doubt.
Read MoreCOMMENT: Carbon markets – how to stop worrying and COPe with change
Recent actions by Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to pause the authorisation of new voluntary carbon market (VCM) credits represent the start of country level accounting impacting the VCM, as the mechanisms laid out in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement begin to be implemented, writes Sebastien Cross of ratings firm BeZero Carbon.
Read MoreCOMMENT: Statement on the credibility of HFLD credits in global carbon markets
A new crediting approach for High Forest, Low Deforestation (HFLD) jurisdictions is a credible way of incentivising the avoidance of deforestation in areas anchored by the large areas of intact forest, argue members of the Forests for Life Partnership in response to concerns raised about whether such units are appropriate for use in the CORSIA aviation offsetting mechanism.
Read MoreCOMMENT: The EU’s MSR sale proposal – “Ooooh! Look at that cookie jar!”
The European Commission’s plan to bring roughly 200-250 million EUAs out of the Market Stability Reserve (MSR) and auction them to raise €20 billion to fund the bloc’s shift away from Russian energy has jolted the EU ETS, igniting “trust” concerns by market participants who liken the move to Brussels raising the EU’s climate cookie jar.
Read MoreCOMMENT: Can Brussels chase the speculators out of the EU ETS?
EU lawmakers want to clamp down on speculative traders participating in the EU ETS. There’s been a steady drumbeat of complaints over the past few months from MEPs and some member states, claiming that unnamed speculators have driven the price of EUAs too high, and that it’s costing industry too much money. But is restricting speculator access to the EU ETS such a good idea? And is it even feasible?
Read More