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By Anne C. Mulkern | 05/29/2024 06:30 AM EDT
New guidelines will help corporations determine if projects they support have credibility and reduce planet-warming emissions.
Treasure Secretary Janet Yellen announced guidelines Tuesday for voluntary carbon markets, aiming to build confidence in the unregulated system to address climate change. Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The Biden administration’s new guidelines to strengthen voluntary carbon markets will help ensure that corporate participants such as Amazon, Google and Walmart are funding credible projects that actually reduce emissions, experts said.
But some advocates warned that the six-page outline of how the unregulated markets should work will not address climate change and called them “cosmetic fixes” to the flawed notion that corporations will voluntarily address climate change.
The guidelines released Tuesday aim to build confidence in a booming private market that lets businesses fund projects such as planting trees in India to offset their own emissions. The corporate financing is sometimes called “buying offsets” and aims both to contain greenhouse gases and stave off government emissions mandates.
Although they aim to reduce planet-warming emissions, voluntary carbon markets have raised concerns about whether they are supporting projects that fall short of their projected decarbonization goals.
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