Abstract
Ensuring the environmental integrity of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes, whether through offset arrangements, a market mechanism or non-market approaches, is a priority for the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Any conventional transferred mitigation outcome, such as an offset agreement, that involves exchanging greenhouse gases with different lifetimes can increase global warming on some timescales. We show that a simple ‘do no harm’ principle regarding the choice of metrics to use in such transactions can be used to guard against this, noting that it may also be applicable in other contexts such as voluntary and compliance carbon markets. We also show that both approximate and exact ‘warming equivalent’ exchanges are possible, but present challenges of implementation in any conventional market. Warming-equivalent emissions may, however, be useful in formulating warming budgets in a two-basket approach to mitigation and in reporting contributions to warming in the context of the global stocktake.
Highlights
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement provides for parties to help achieve their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) through internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs)
We show that fully climate neutral transactions could be constructed, but if short-lived climate pollutant (SLCP) are used to completely offset CO2 emissions, these would require a potentially indefinite commitment to future emission reductions or removals to compensate for the climate impact of current CO2 emissions, presenting even more implementation challenges
Our ‘dual valuation’ proposal, valuing transactions using the emission metric that results in an overall mitigation of global emissions whatever metric is used to evaluate it, would represent a simple way to take advantage of some opportunities for low-cost SLCP emission reductions without compromising the overall aim of the Paris Agreement to limit the increase in global average temperatures
Summary
Myles Allen1,2 , Katsumasa Tanaka3,4 , Adrian Macey , Michelle Cain , Stuart Jenkins , John Lynch and Matthew Smith. France 4 Earth System Risk Analysis Section, Earth System Division, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba, Japan 5 Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand 6 Centre for Environmental and Agricultural Informatics, Cranfield University, Bedford, United Kingdom.
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