Steps Towards Carbon Neutrality

An overview of strategies and the role of offsetting

  • News 24.11.2017

In the Paris Agreement, the governments of the world have pledged to attain climate neutrality in the second half of this century. More precisely, in Art. 4.1 parties agreed to "achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases". However, the collective as well as the majority of measures by individual countries fall short of embarking on a pathway towards that objective. But nevertheless, an increasing number of actors – countries, sub-national entities, as well as corporations – have stepped up their efforts and set themselves carbon neutrality goals.

In the Policy Brief "Steps Towards Carbon Neutrality – An Overview of Strategies and the Role of Offsetting" Lukas Hermwille and Markus Gornik (Research Group Energy, Transport and Climate Policy, Wuppertal Institute) portray the commitments of Costa Rica, Norway, Sweden, the City of Melbourne, Australia and the corporation Microsoft. All cases have set themselves ambitious neutrality goals and have implemented measures to achieve them. However, none of the cases will be able to achieve accomplish neutrality on their own, at least not on short-term. The remaining emissions will be compensated using carbon credits either from domestic offset schemes (Costa Rica) or from international schemes.

For the time being, voluntary carbon neutrality goals, as presented in this Policy Brief, are an effective way to demonstrate leadership in climate protection. For the near future, pioneering actors that set voluntary carbon or climate neutrality goals could provide a significant source of demand for international carbon credits.

The Policy Brief can be downloaded from the Carbon Mechanisms website at the following link.


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