Carbon Market Watch provided feedback and input to a public consultation organised by Gold Standard, focusing on Gold Standard’s methodology for the early phasing out of coal-fired thermal power plants and their replacement with renewable energy generation plants. Due to issues with determining additionality and the many uncertainties of the energy market, CMW advises against …
Read more “Gold Standard consultation: Early coal plant retirement”
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market has just released a set of new rules which seek to boost the quality of carbon credits for offsetting but ignore other issues with the market. While this is an improvement on current practices, the problematic concept of offsetting itself must be abandoned. As part of its …
Read more “Integrity Council’s new carbon market rules offer improvements but don’t close all loopholes”
This study assesses the effectiveness of carbon market grievance mechanisms of leading voluntary carbon market standards. While most voluntary carbon market standards have grievance mechanisms in place, most of them are opaque and do not properly describe their procedures.
The standards bodies operating in the voluntary carbon market must ensure that climate projects take the rights and concerns of local and indigenous communities into account and offer them avenues for redress. A review conducted on behalf of Carbon Market Watch found that only one standard body, Gold Standard, provides appropriate recourse to file grievances …
Read more “Blocked avenues for redress: Shedding light on carbon market grievance mechanisms”
Despite the role voluntary carbon markets are meant to play in financing climate action, the exact amount of money reaching climate projects and local communities is shrouded in mystery, while nine out of 10 intermediaries do not disclose their fees or profit margins, a new study commissioned by Carbon Market Watch reveals.
The purchase of carbon credits through the voluntary carbon market is widely considered to be an effective way to channel finance towards climate action. However, despite years of existence and the recent hype surrounding voluntary carbon markets, no public research exists to assess how much VCM finance is actually reaching climate mitigation projects and local …
Read more “Secretive intermediaries: Are carbon markets really financing climate action?”
Commissioned by Carbon Market Watch and conducted by AlliedOffsets, this report explores the role of intermediaries in the voluntary carbon market. It seeks to determine how much of the money flowing through these markets reaches climate projects on the ground and how much is intercepted by intermediaries as fees and mark-up to fatten their profits. The report identifies a dearth of information on the details of carbon credit trades and a lack of transparency on the part of intermediaries.
Voluntary carbon market standards promising tonne-for-tonne compensation and exact measurement of impact are attempting to square the circle, argues Gilles Dufrasne. One solution is to drop offsetting claims and offer credits as financial contributions to climate action. Last week marked the closing of the public consultation on quality criteria for carbon credits by a new …
Read more “Scale vs integrity: The impossibility of developing a large market of high quality carbon offsets”
Carbon Market Watch welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to the IFRS S2 Climate-related disclosures standard. We focus below on questions 5, and 10 which cover the topics of target setting and reporting of information related to corporate climate mitigation action.
