Carbon markets have emerged in recent decades as one of the most important tools for curbing industrial greenhouse gas emissions, but they present a number of novel enforcement challenges when compared with more conventional pollution regulations. These challenges include new regulators with narrow authority, lack of legal precedent, and more.
This brief explores two different types of carbon markets: baseline-and-credit mechanisms, which are primarily structured around offsetting and enable trade in certified emissions reductions between countries and companies (an example being the Clean Development Mechanism –CDM); and cap and trade schemes or emissions trading systems (ETS), which
Putting a price on carbon can be an indispensable part of a country’s strategy to reduce emissions in an efficient way. Furthermore, putting a price on carbon through international carbon markets can also offer significant cost benefits and enable flexibility in achieving emission reduction targets.
A new report from Ecosystem Marketplace, shows that funding to conserve and increase carbon stored in forests around the world has more than doubled between 2016 and 2019. But authors say forest carbon finance still falls far short of what’s needed to counter global forest loss and support increased climate ambition.
Twelve northeast and mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia are participating in the Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI), a regional transportation effort to coordinate investment in cleaner transportation and infrastructure.
This paper assesses the overall costs and distributional impacts of China’s planned nationwide emissions trading system for CO2 emissions reductions, a system that will differ from cap and trade and become the largest CO2 trading system in the world.
Past cap-and-trade programmes have tended to encourage polluters to adopt existing abatement technologies, but have generally had little effect on innovation. This paper presents new evidence that the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) may have bucked this trend and encouraged innovation rather than adoption.
Past cap-and-trade programmes have tended to encourage polluters to adopt existing abatement technologies, but have generally had little effect on innovation. This paper presents new evidence that the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) may have bucked this trend and encouraged innovation rather than adoption.
