While many companies want to play their part by reducing carbon emissions, we’re still far away from achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals. Voluntary carbon markets are being established to reward ambitious businesses for their carbon offsets.
Carbon voluntary markets provide a wide range of additional advantages to people and the environment, including promoting the quality of soils and water supplies, enhancing community rights to land and resources, and boosting the income of indigenous peoples and local communities.
If you’re trying to reduce your carbon footprint as a business, here are five reasons why carbon markets can help you become more successful.
Carbon markets are growing and promising to get involved in
Due to the fact that 83% of NDCs express a desire to use global market mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions, interest in carbon markets is rising globally.
For the NDCs to be implemented, carbon financing will be essential, and the Paris Agreement permits the use of such market mechanisms.
In 2021, Britain also created its own version of the EU’s carbon market following Brexit. This initially covers cutting carbon emissions in domestic flights, electricity generation, and high energy-using industries, but there are plans to expand this scheme in the future.
A wide variety of carbon offsets exist, with more upcoming projects being developed
One of the main perks when it comes to carbon offsetting is the amount of choice. There’s a diverse range of projects and untapped possibilities for your business to get involved in, from DGB Group reforestation and cookstoves projects to resource recovery from landfills.
It’s also an exciting time for technical advancements, with drones and laser-detecting devices (like our daughter company Statix AI) offering innovation within this sector. Not only do these technologies allow for better practice, but they also enable smaller, more diverse projects as the carbon market grows.
When getting involved in offsetting carbon emissions, you wouldn’t be flying solo – nearly 40 countries use a type of carbon pricing or have plans to implement one, each with its own price, method, and opportunities. The possibilities are endless, especially when interest is rising.
There’s a strong momentum for success in carbon markets due to net zero goals
A climate emergency is well within our grasp, so tangible solutions need to be implemented if we want to avoid carbon emissions reaching dangerous levels.
As discussed in this year’s COP26, the goal is to halve emissions within the next decade, and carbon markets are a large-scale way to achieve this.
Not only is climate change creating strong momentum for success within carbon markets, but corporate commitments are adding to this.
Netflix pledged to be Netzero, and many airlines are offering passenger offset programs where their emissions can be offset.
With high-profile projects like these, the carbon market will continue to expand and provide easy entrances for newcomers, as well as encourage an upward trend of standardization and checking carbon standards to strengthen the system.
Businesses are finding success with carbon offsets
While the lack of a visible output with carbon offsetting may be off-putting, it’s important to note that many countries have already had massive success with it. In 2016, 191 countries adopted a historic resolution aimed at curbing carbon pollution on international flights, collaboratively limiting carbon emissions between the participating countries.
Individual countries have also benefitted from increasing their carbon offsets. Under Sweden’s carbon tax, the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions fell 16% between 2000 and 2012, and their carbon taxes are among the highest in the world.
The Brazilian state of Mato Grosso also managed to go from being the world’s 10th largest emitter of greenhouse gases to the 77th from 2004 to 2014 by cutting deforestation projects.
If you were unsure beforehand, it’s now obvious that getting involved in carbon markets is a path to success. And it’s not just countries at large that are experiencing this, but individual businesses are contributing to these figures.
Beyond the success of corporations, carbon markets also have benefits for local communities and residents, including improved sanitation, health, and connectivity. They’re a proactive and compassionate way to reduce carbon emissions.
Is Offsetting your emissions easy to get involved in and is support readily available?
As carbon markets are increasing in popularity, systems are in place to make them easier to participate in. At the UN Climate Leadership Summit in 2014, dozens of governments vowed to support carbon pricing and offer collaborative solutions in order to support the climate movement.
There are also initiatives like Science Based Targets that are helping companies set carbon emission targets and devise methodologies to achieve these goals. These have already been adopted by over 1,000 companies that are eager to make a difference.
If you want to get involved in the voluntary carbon market and increase your company’s climate efforts, you first need to reduce emissions as much as possible.
Then, you can look for effective carbon standard projects that are generating environmental benefits, in order to make a difference to the planet.
While carbon markets alone aren’t enough to completely eradicate climate change, they’re certainly a step in the right direction that any business can easily implement and succeed within.
