🌎Overview

Thirty years after global leaders first officially acknowledged the harmful impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere to the climate system, and after multiple international pledges to reduce emissions via the Kyoto protocol in 1997 and the the Paris Agreement in 2015, our collective international response to prevent worst climate impacts and to reverse existing damage is still crude at best.[1]

In the Paris Agreement, 196 world leaders made a legally binding commitment to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, when compared to pre-industrial temperature levels. The importance of this milestone reflects the need to prevent irremediable environmental catastrophes that could come from more drastic temperature shifts, such as sea level rise, melting glaciers, flooding of coastal areas, destruction of ecosystems, draughts and compromising of freshwater supply.[2] The main greenhouse gas released in the atmosphere by human activities is carbon dioxide, and while industry has taken significant steps in the past decades to reduce carbon emissions by using clean and renewable energy, climate scientists' analysis show that reduction is not nearly sufficient. Countries must work towards net zero emission, with all produced carbon being captured and offset, leading up to a carbon neutral world by 2050 in order to keep us on track.[3]

The shift in international climate and economic policy in recent years reflects the perception of the insufficiency of a sustainable development perspective and a pivot towards a regenerative lens. We used to comprehend that our development shouldn't consume and destroy the environment in a way that would leave next generations deprived of the resources we enjoyed; but we now understand that even if we were to phase out the destruction, we will be doomed to reach a bottomline of no return. Survival will require active remediation and regeneration of the finite natural resources we have on Earth.

In making commitments to change countries patterns of emissions, we faced a challenge: some industries could make shifts in practices and technologies used to reduce their own carbon emissions, but many businesses are unable to eliminate or even reduce their emissions without generating economic losses that could destabilize markets. To all groups, but especially the ones who are unable to limit their greenhouse-gas emissions, the carbon offset market emerged as a promising solution: through investing in efforts to capture carbon, they were able to offset their pollution and hence mitigate worsening the impacts of the climate crisis.

Existing Solutions

Several solutions to carbon offsetting have emerged in the past decades: from nature-based carbon recapture efforts through tree planting and ecosystem reconstruction, to direct air capture, conversion of captured carbon into useful products and even storage in underground geologic formations.[4] This is a fast growing industry which has been projected to be worth upwards of US $50 billion by 2030.

Several large companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and ExxonMobile have made public commitments of ambitious carbon reduction and neutrality goals in the coming decades totalling over 18 billion dollars, which substantiate the predictions made for the market growth.