Carbon credits: our best tools to fight climate change, as long as…

If in one hand the the market for carbon offsets is booming, on the other, global agreement on rules and standards have to follow, towards achieving a net-zero future and mitigating the current climate crisis.

“Carbon markets should be a fire hose for directing money where it’s genuinely needed in the climate crisis. But that will only happen if we rethink how we are using carbon credits. Instead of seeing them as a way to wash away climate “sins,” we should focus on the outcomes we are trying to achieve.”

There are three main outcomes that the carbon markets could address to enable meaningful climate action:

• Reducing emissions as quickly as possible: “I emit a metric ton of CO2, and pay someone not to emit their ton”. Engagement ?

• Protecting natural carbon sinks: give credit for preventing the release of one metric ton of carbon from an existing natural sink. Breaks ?

• Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: paying someone to remove CO2 from the air and store it, CCS, Carbon Capture and Storage (as extensively reported in this blog less than a week ago). New Industrial Revolution ?

Aggressive decarbonization will only happen by steerring the money in the right direction. And “thinking of carbon credits in categories of reduction, protection, and removal, with separate incentives for each, would be a good first step”. Click for this great and recent TIME article from Gabrielle Walker (from Rethinking Removals a.o.) and Bruno Giussani (Global Curator of TED a.o), and see how the authors well elaborate the issue at hand: #carboncreditmarkets.