US Climate envoy on financing transition to clean energy

US Climate envoy, John Kerry

JOHN Kerry, the US climate envoy, took the stage at the US pavilion in the COP27 conference center on Nov. 9 to pitch a new way for developing countries to raise finance for transitioning their economies to clean energy: sell carbon offsets to US companies.

Carbon offsets, a purported solution to climate change that has been plagued by greenwashing, are making a comeback at COP27.

The idea that companies should pay for credits that match their carbon footprint with reductions achieved elsewhere—via forest conservation, renewable energy farms, or other climate-friendly activities, often in developing countries—received high-profile endorsements this week.

Those came not only from Kerry, but from a new coalition of African leaders who want to raise climate adaptation capital that wealthy governments are failing to put up themselves.

That’s in spite of a long history of problems with carbon credits that includes shoddy accounting, fraudulent marketing claims, and human rights abuses.

Kerry’s plan aims to create a marketplace through which builders of clean energy projects in developing countries can sell carbon credits to companies abroad that are unable or unwilling to directly reduce their own carbon footprints.

This money is “not in lieu of any other financial commitments” the US might make, Kerry emphasized, and fossil fuel companies aren’t eligible to participate.

But some carbon market experts are skeptical, given the risk that credits could be double-counted, credit-flipping middlemen might skim profits that should go to communities, and companies may use offsets to delay their own decarbonization efforts.

Kerry’s plan “does not close the door to misleading uses of carbon credits,” said Gilles Dufrasne, lead global carbon markets analyst at the think tank Carbon Market Watch. “More detailed rules are needed to ensure that this new initiative will not serve greenwashing campaigns.”– Quartz

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