Ecosystem Marketplace tracked its 1 billionth voluntary carbon offset, while members of the International Emissions Trading Association vowed to counter the rising tide of populism with words and actions at last week’s Innovate4Climate in Barcelona. Here are highlights from two key reports released last week.
29 May 2017 | BARCELONA | With the United Kingdom on the brink of leaving the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS), the United States locked in the inertia of a Donald Trump presidency, and populism stoking fears of slackening commitment to meeting the climate challenge, support for carbon markets is coming from two once-unlikely sources: namely, risk-adverse corporate boards and China, according to the International Emission Trading Association’s (IETA) annual Greenhouse-Gas Market Sentiment survey, which was released last week at the Innovate4Climate conference in Barcelona one day after Ecosystem Marketplace’s latest survey of voluntary carbon market practitioners, Unlocking Potential: State of Voluntary Carbon Markets 2017.
Ecosystem Marketplace is published by environmental NGO Forest Trends, and the report identified transactions for roughly 63 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) last year, including the 1 billionth metric ton transacted since the first State of Voluntary Carbon Markets Report in 2006. That represents a 24 percent drop from 2015, in part because two large participants failed to respond to the survey.
A disturbing 56.2 MtCO2e of offsets went unsold.