carbon emissions

A large-scale experiment in Gujarat shows that emissions trading markets can dramatically reduce air pollution, improve compliance, and lower costs in developing countries – proving that market-based environmental regulation can work effectively where pollution is most severe.

Carbon offsets can, in theory, reduce emissions efficiently, but in practice problems like non-additional projects, self-selection, and weak regulation mean they may fail to cut – and can even increase – global emissions unless embedded within properly capped compliance markets.

Reducing oil use is vital, but which barrels we extract matters too: shifting production towards low-carbon deposits could have avoided around 10 billion tonnes of CO2e emissions since 1992.

Fragmented carbon markets, especially voluntary offsets, lack the credibility and scale needed to drive global decarbonisation. A proposal for an opt-in, unified global compliance carbon market could reduce emissions cost-effectively while channelling finance to lower-income countries.

Carbon offset programmes aim to lower emissions by allowing high-income countries to meet part of their reduction targets by financing projects in low- and middle-income countries. Evidence from China—one of the world’s largest suppliers of these pro...

Before taking credit for offsetting carbon or reducing emissions, organisations need to ask: Would this have happened anyway?