In the voluntary carbon market (VCM), project developers carry out activities that either remove greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere or reduce the amount of GHGs entering the atmosphere compared to scenarios where those activities did not occur. They are issued credits (measured in tonnes of CO2 equivalent) representing the amount of emissions their activities have “saved” – in other words, how many units of climate change mitigation the activities have caused. Other entities (businesses, individuals, and, in some cases, public institutions or governments) can purchase these credits, thereby sponsoring the mitigation projects that generated them. The buyers can then apply the credits toward a GHG reduction target (typically offsetting the buyer’s own emissions) and/or make environmental claims such as supporting climate change mitigation efforts that have reduced emissions by a certain amount.
The act of claiming or offsetting is completed when such credits are cancelled or retired from the registry they are logged in, as they are then considered to have been “used” and are not available to offset anyone else’s emissions (see Textbox 1).
Below, we take a look at the credits that have not yet been retired: those that have been issued, are logged in a registry, and are thus available for purchase. By the end of 2023, the amount of such available credits in the four major registries (see Text…
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