How can voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) contribute to corporate net zero climate action? Does it lead to delay on action elsewhere?
- High-quality, high-integrity carbon markets can make a meaningful contribution to the Paris Agreement goals while at the same time contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Credits should be used in addition to broader decarbonization strategies. To do this, carbon credits should be deployed to tackle emissions that sit outside the value chain of companies (also defined as ‘beyond-value-chain mitigation’ (BVCM)).
- Carbon credits must be used in addition – and not to delay or displace – urgent and deep decarbonization that would otherwise happen today.
- Credits form a critical tool that organizations can utilize to address residual emissions, emissions that are hard to abate, or emissions they haven’t yet been able to remove – e.g., if the technology is not yet available.