A United Nations task force has strongly condemned the idea that companies use carbon credits outside government-regulated emission markets to claim emissions reductions, according to a draft document.
As many companies, including the biggest oil and gas producers and technology giants, are vowing to slash emissions and emission intensity, some of them have turned to the multi-million carbon credits market to offset their own emissions.
The UN, however, doesn’t believe that these carbon offsets should be considered a viable approach to emissions reductions.
“Carbon credits used cannot be counted as their [polluters’] own emission reductions” when these credits are acquired in markets outside of government-regulated carbon markets, the UN task force on global carbon markets wrote in the document seen by FT.
The task force has been convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who criticized last year the voluntary carbon credits markets as a pathway to reducing emissions.
Recommendations for businesses, investors, cities, and regions from Guterres’s High-Level Expert Group on Net Zero include “genuine decarbonization with detailed targets for 2025, 2030, and 2035,” Guterres said in a speech at the end of last year.
The UN Secretary-General also pointed out that companies and investors should avoid “dubious offsets or carbon credits, in any scope of emissions.”
The UN and its head Guterres are calling for a swift energy transition towards renewables and seek “the beginning of the end” of fossil fuels.
Energy and tech companies have had mixed fortunes with carbon credits.
Amazon, for example, has quit carbon offset standards that its founder Jeff Bezos helped to fund, opting instead for a new standard that it will develop.
According to a Reuters report, citing the online retail giant, Amazon will devise a new standard for verifying the quality of carbon offsets that it needs in order to hit its net-zero targets. The report said the new standard will cover reforestation and agroforestry.
