Today is Tuesday, 21 May 2024.
A few days ago the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) unveiled its “Guidelines for High Integrity Use of Carbon Credits”, setting out clear guidance on how corporate buyers should consider their use of carbon credits to progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement.
IETA, a non-profit business association, was founded in 1999 as the first international group devoted to pricing and trading greenhouse gas reductions, Initially focusing on the Kyoto Protocol and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), over time it expanded to cover the EU ETS and other national and sub-national efforts across the Globe, developing policy and market frameworks for Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCM).
The Guidelines are intended for companies engaged on climate action and that trust VCM as an additional pathway towards reaching the Paris Agreement goals. This means that trading at the VCM is something that goes in parallel with internal businesses decarbonisation and emissions reductions efforts, in line with ambitious near-and long-term net zero targets.
IETA’s press release quotes a study that indicated that 81% of the world’s largest companies have not set net zero targets. Here is a link for that study, by Allied Offsets.
About IETA’s “Guidelines for the High Integrity Use of Carbon Credits”, in short, are the following:
1 – Demonstrate support for the Paris Agreement Goals
2 – Quantify and publicly disclose scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions profiles
3 – Establish a net zero decarbonisation pathway and near-term targets
4 – Use carbon credits in line with the mitigation hierarchy
5 – Ensure that only high-quality carbon credits are used
6 – Transparently disclose use of carbon credits
On page 9 of the Guidelines there is a great table comparing 4 carbon credits usage cases, from the perspectives of 6 different guidance, including IETA itself, SBTi and VCMI.
Click below to download the full 20-pages document.
And at the image below for the press release.
