Abstract

Under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, countries have the option to use existing crediting schemes, including schemes serving voluntary carbon offset markets, as a basis for trading “mitigation outcomes”. Parties to the Paris Agreement engaged in such trading must seek to ensure its environmental integrity, an essential component of which is ensuring the quality of units (or “credits”) transacted. In deciding whether to rely on existing crediting schemes, therefore, countries must be able to assess the relative quality of the credits these schemes issue. Assessing unit quality can be a complex undertaking involving analysis at multiple levels (e.g. institutions, methodologies, and mitigation activities). An essential requirement, however, is for crediting schemes to have robust standards and practices in place for ensuring unit quality. This paper presents a framework for assessing the standards and practices of crediting schemes on aspects related to unit quality, and road tests this framework on six existing schemes. A key finding is that all six schemes have weaknesses in their standards and practices, suggesting the need for ongoing improvement as carbon market institutions continue to evolve under the Paris Agreement.

摘要

根据《巴黎协定》第 6.2 条，各国可以选择使用现有的信用计划，包括服务于自愿碳抵消市场的计划，作为交易“缓解结果”的基础。参与此类交易的《巴黎协定》缔约方必须寻求确保其环境完整性，其中一个重要组成部分是确保交易单位（或“信用”）的质量。因此，在决定是否依赖现有的信贷计划时，各国必须能够评估这些计划发放的信贷的相对质量。评估单位质量可能是一项复杂的工作，涉及多个层面（例如机构、方法和缓解活动）的分析。然而，一项基本要求是信贷计划必须具备健全的标准和做法，以确保单位质量。本文提出了一个评估信贷计划在与单位质量相关方面的标准和实践的框架，并在六个现有计划上对该框架进行了路测。一个关键发现是，所有六个计划在其标准和实践方面都存在弱点，这表明随着碳市场机构在巴黎协定下的不断发展，需要不断改进。