Carbon offsets: New $100 billion market faces disputes over trading rules
Credit: Carbon Tracker
Global warming is the world’s biggest market failure, so the solution might just be better trading. On one side of the trade would be the companies clogging the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases; on the other countless projects to eliminate the problem by planting trees or building machines that capture carbon dioxide. Create a market that turns a ton of removed carbon into a commodity just like corn or copper, and money will flow from the emitters to the fixers.
That’s the theory behind the new carbon-offset market being conceived by Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England, and Bill Winters, the chief executive of Standard Chartered Plc. The two financial veterans late last year set up a rule-making taskforce populated by hundreds of bankers, airline executives, sustainability experts, commodities traders, scientists and other business leaders.
Share this article
Share this article
DUBAI, UAE, May 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ No one is too small to make a positive impact on the planet. This is what a new Dubai based start-up, Olive Gaea, is ready to prove as it launches the first carbon offset platform in the MENA region today.
Having the sixth largest per capita carbon footprint in the world, UAE residents and businesses will now be able to become carbon neutral or even carbon positive by removing their own carbon emissions from the atmosphere in just a couple of clicks. Climate change is a real, urgent threat. We all share the responsibility to act in order to preserve our planet and, ultimately, our very future. The good news is that each one of us can now actually help solve this problem, says Olive Gaea s Founder and CEO, Vivek Tripathi.
Natural climate solutions (NCS) play a critical role in supporting the future of both climate and nature. Research conducted for this report confirms estimates that NCS can provide one-third (close to 7 Gt CO2) of the climate mitigation to reach a 1.5- or 2-degree pathway by 2030—and at a lower cost than other forms of carbon dioxide removal. Deployed in the right way, NCS can also produce high co-benefits that accrue to nature and to communities. Building off the recommendations from the Taskforce for Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, this report sets out five actions to accelerate the scale-up of high-quality NCS implementation and unlock markets through the combined efforts of business leaders, policymakers and civil society.