COP27: U.S. climate envoy Kerry, Bezos and Rockefeller launch carbon offset plan

During COP27, it seems that United States decided to move strongly into carbon credit markets.

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, the Bezos Earth Fund, and The Rockefeller Foundation announced the creation of the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA), a carbon offset plan meant to help emerging and developing economies speed their transition away from fossil fuels, by catalyzing private capital for the clean energy.

"If we're going to phase out fossil fuels in our energy systems, we believe voluntary carbon markets have a role to play," said Andrew Steer, President of the Bezos Earth Fund.

Over the next year, these three parties will engage with developing countries, climate champions, and global experts to design the ETA. The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), the Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative (VCMI), the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), and WRI for the Greenhouse Gas Protocol will be consulted to ensure broad alignment with best practice environmental and carbon market standards.

More specifically, the group will aim on issues such as:

• A methodology which contains rigorous protocols for crediting and for monitoring, reporting, and verification so that any carbon credits generated are real, additional, and permanent.

• Rules and safeguards, which ensure that the use of carbon credits by companies is consistent with a science-aligned net zero pathway. Participating companies will need to achieve deep reductions in their own value chain emissions, with emission reductions generated through the ETA supplementing their internal abatement.

• Parameters that maintain integrity while ensuring sufficient supply (i.e. developing country participation) and demand (i.e. company participation).

• Guidance for social safeguards, benefit-sharing arrangements and support for job creation and training in participating jurisdictions.

• Stringent end-to-end transparency guidelines.

Click on the image below to read the press release from the The Rockefeller Foundation, incluing the support quotes from several other high profile carbon credit d.

Environmental groups panned the initiative, saying that the scheme would delay real efforts to slash emissions. And U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres recommended that carbon credits be used sparingly by companies and governments to avoiding undermining their net-zero emission plans. In other words and like indicated in our post from yesterday, carbon credits to offset residual emissions from companies that have already made their carbon inventories and decarbonized what was possible.