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.
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There’s a fresh nature-based carbon project in town, and she’s getting attention from corporations with ambitious net-zero goals. Her name? Mangroves, a type of tree species and coastal forest ecosystem native to the tropics and subtropics.
Blue carbon, carbon captured by oceans or the ecosystems surrounding oceans, has huge untapped potential for carbon sequestration and Verra, the verified carbon standard, told Yale360 that the blue carbon market is about to take off. According to the article, Verra has issued 970,000 credits to blue carbon projects. And mangroves projects are poised to increase dramatically as they have become trendy with with big companies with ambitious carbon initiatives. Over the past year, Gucci, Apple and Procter & Gamble have announced mangrove protection and restoration projects to help combat greenhouse gas emissions.
The Carbon to Value Initiative Announces First Cohort of Carbontech Startup Participants
Climatetech leaders from the Urban Future Lab, Greentown Labs, and the Fraunhofer USA TechBridge Program enthusiastically welcome 10 startups to the initiative
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NEW YORK and SOMERVILLE, Mass., April 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ The
Carbon to Value Initiative (C2V Initiative), a multi-year collaboration among The Urban Future Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Greentown Labs, and Fraunhofer USA, has selected 10 startups for the first year of this exciting accelerator. The C2V Initiative is supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the Consulate General of Canada in New York. This program, the first of its kind, aims to create a thriving innovation ecosystem for the commercialization of carbontech technologies that capture, convert, and store carbon dioxide (CO₂) into valuable end products or services.
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Global clean energy spending is on track to exceed $1 trillion in 2021, Edward Morse, managing director and global head of commodities research at Citigroup, said during a webinar on the state of energy finance hosted by Our Energy Policy on Wednesday. However, Citigroup estimates spending must reach $3-5 trillion per year to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
Inosi Nyatta, a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell s Finance & Restructuring Group, said she believes that with the rapid growth of the renewable industry, the world will close the gap between current energy spending, and what is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement. However, others on the webinar panel were less optimistic.
Alaska Airlines targets net-zero carbon by 2040
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Alaska Airlines has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions to net-zero by 2040 as part of a commitment that includes strengthened near-term carbon, waste and water goals.
Alaska this week signed into The Climate Pledge, co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019, which is committed to achieving net-zero carbon a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement.
The Seattle-based carrier said its roadmap to net-zero emissions included five areas: fleet renewal, operational efficiency, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), novel propulsion and “credible, high-quality carbon offsetting technology”.
This included the use of first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to optimize flight paths.