Challenges and Opportunities in the Voluntary Carbon Markets

Published

October 7, 2024

Author(s)

Pamela M. Chu, Noah Last, Buddhika Hapuwatte, Clayton Porkorny, Vishal Agrawal

Abstract

With the increasing need to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, the voluntary carbon market (VCM) provides a platform to help organizations reach net-zero emission goals through the purchase of carbon offsets. Carbon offsets provide a means to compensate for remaining hard-to-abate emissions, incentivize sustainable development, and stimulate financing to further advance, deploy, and scale decarbonization and carbon removal technologies. Recent dramatic growth of the VCM, however, has led to increased concerns regarding the quality of the carbon offsets. To examine the opportunities to improve confidence and enhance the efficiency of the VCM, the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business hosted The Business of Carbon Offsets Workshop in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This report summarizes identified challenges: trust, quality, scaling the market, and the role of the VCM and several opportunities: data transparency and accessibility, science and technology, standardization, market structure, and policy landscape. These ideas are presented to spur collaboration and action among the market players.

Citation

To be published as a report

Pub Type

Others

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Keywords

carbon credits, carbon offsets, voluntary carbon market

Citation

Chu, P. , Last, N. , Hapuwatte, B. , Porkorny, C. and Agrawal, V. (2024), Challenges and Opportunities in the Voluntary Carbon Markets, To be published as a report, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957721 (Accessed January 17, 2025)