Long-Awaited Rules for Carbon Offset Market Disappoint Experts
- Media Manager
- Mar 28, 2023
- 1 min read
Bloomberg
Written By: Natasha White and Akshat Rathi
Published: March 29th, 2023
A global governance body has released new standards aimed at rebuilding trust in a market facing repeated failures.
A widely touted effort to clean up the embattled carbon-offsets market has been met with disappointment among experts.
The new guidelines from the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, released Thursday following three years of work, present incremental improvements to a system that allows corporations and individuals to pay for credits that compensate for their climate damage.
“Twenty years ago this kind of effort might have been a good idea,” said Danny Cullenward, a research fellow at American University. “Now it feels like far too little, too late.”
William McDonnell, chief operating officer of the Integrity Council, said there is a pathway. “We're very committed to continuous improvement and further raising ambition in the market,” he said.
Verra, the world’s largest standards body that has faced allegations for systematically issuing junk credits and paused dozens of projects, said it’s “very supportive” of the council’s work and “looks forward to reviewing” the documentation.
Annette Nazareth, the Integrity Council’s chair, said in a statement that the new documentation is “an important step towards a transparent, regulated-like market where buyers can easily identify and price carbon credits.”
