Voluntary Carbon Offsets Research Articles

An Overview: Forest Carbon Accounting (Case Study Ulu Masen Ecosystem Aceh Province, Indonesia)

This thesis is descriptive qualitative research of forest carbon accounting and Ulu Masen Ecosystem of Aceh Province where included in REDD projects for Carbon Trading scenario. The data which is applied in this research are primary data from the field in Ulu Masen Ecosystem Aceh Province and secondary data of International references worldwide related to this issue. The main purpose of this research is to reveal further overview of forest carbon accounting, REDD issues and promote them into publics, accountants, economist as the main role of accountants are not focusing in financial, banking, insurance only but also as social and environment accountants. To probe the Islamic outlook towards these issues and acknowledge local community where REDD projects upcoming to. The research gained information of Aceh Government initiative to have carbon trading of carbon offsets as REDD scheme scenario based on both in Voluntary Carbon Offsets (VCO) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) market. Nowadays, both Aceh Government and Merrill Lynch have committed to get carbon trading for 750,000 hectares of Aceh forests in Ulu Masen Ecosystem in total of US $ 9 Million over next 30 years, right after Aceh Government gain verification audit of carbon storage in the ecosystem internationally. JEL Classification : M0, M41, N55, L31 Key words: Forest carbon accounting, carbon trading, REDD, Ulu Masen ecosystem

Train travel passengers' willingness to pay to offset their CO2 emissions in Korea

Due to the upsurge in concerns regarding climate change, the carbon market has been growing more rapidly than ever. Recently, a more innovative and experimental voluntary carbon market has been playing a supplementary role to the compliance market, which is lacking in flexibility and diversity, and has been accounting for an increasingly larger portion of the carbon market. Among the efforts to accumulate data and develop appropriate policies for the voluntary carbon market, it is necessary to analyze the benefits of carbon offsets for GHG emissions from railways. This study attempts to apply contingent valuation (CV) to measure the public's willingness to pay (WTP) for voluntary carbon offsets (VCOs) from railway travel in Korea. Furthermore, in order to enhance the statistical efficiency of the WTP estimation and reduce the response effect in the context of WTP elicitation, this study employs a one-and-one-half bound dichotomous choice format. The estimate of the mean WTP for a VCO program for a specific travel distance is estimated to be KRW 1,345 (USD 1.24) per person. This quantitative information can be utilized to develop policies related to mitigating climate change.

Context effects and heterogeneity in voluntary carbon offsetting – a choice experiment in Switzerland

Voluntary carbon offsets allow individuals to neutralise the CO emissions from their consumption. In a choice experiment among more than a thousand Swiss consumers, we analyse how the propensity to offset varies with consumption contexts and offset project attributes. The adopted latent class model accounts for heterogeneity in consumers’ preferences and in their motivations to buy carbon offsets. We find that consumers are not only responsive to project type and quality aspects – such as government certification – but also to the consumption context. Our results suggest that carbon offsets are perceived as differentiated rather than homogeneous goods. Estimating a single willingness to pay measure for offsets, as previous studies have done, may thus be misleading. To complement our analysis, we provide a characterisation of offset customers as well as insights into the relationship between carbon offsetting and other voluntary mitigation behaviour.

Improving Citizen Responsibility in the North and its Consequences for the South: Voluntary Carbon Offsets and Government Involvement

The main question for this chapter is whether there is a need for government intervention to ensure that private carbon offset mechanisms make a useful contribution to climate change policies and ultimately to the pursuit of sustainable development. The chapter investigates practices in Western Europe, with particular focus on the United Kingdom (UK) and the Netherlands. This exploration starts from the premise that Northern consumers are not sufficiently equipped to ensure the integrity of the carbon offset offer, especially when the offsets will be achieved in another part of the world. Secondly, some or most suppliers of carbon offsets have commercial interests, which means that they will compete for sales of carbon credits. This leads to the proposition that there should be guarantees against a race to the bottom regarding the credibility and integrity of the carbon offers. Credibility refers to whether the agreed offsets will in fact be achieved. Integrity refers to whether their achievement will lead to unacceptable negative effects contravening the principle of sustainable development.

Japanese citizens’ preferences regarding voluntary carbon offsets: an experimental social survey of Yokohama and Kitakyushu

This study uses an experimental social survey in two large Japanese cities to explore citizens’ attitudes toward international voluntary carbon offsetting that encourages low carbon development in developing countries. In particular, the study focuses on whether the offsetting is a contribution to meet national target of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction under the Kyoto Protocol or reduction beyond the national target, using Kyoto credits generated from climate change mitigation projects in developing countries. The study finds that around 40% of the survey respondents chose real carbon offsetting over a gift certificate as compensation for their participation in the survey, around half of whom chose carbon offsetting contribution to the world. However, most of the current Japanese carbon offsetting providers utilise only the carbon offsetting contribution to the Japanese government. Thus, Japanese citizens have significant untapped potential for undertaking more carbon offsetting to meet targets other than national targets. However, the results also show that there is a general lack of understanding regarding the mechanism of carbon offsetting. Carbon offsetting providers in Japan and other countries that may have national self-imposed targets and allowing the usage of international carbon offsetting should therefore be considered, so as to provide individuals with the options of either contributing to their government to help it meet its national target or contributing to the world to help reduce GHG emissions beyond the national targets.

Retail Demand for Voluntary Carbon Offsets – A Choice Experiment Among Swiss Consumers

Using a choice experiment conducted among more than a thousand Swiss consumers, we analyze the individual demand for voluntary carbon offsets in different contexts. The analysis is used to identify the consumers’ underlying motives for offsetting emissions, the context effects on their willingness to pay and the influence of the offsetting project characteristics on their propensity for contribution. Furthermore, the characteristics of potential buyers as well as the possibilities of behavioral rebound are explored. To support our results, we assess whether the hypothetical preferences are consistent with the revealed behavior. The adopted latent class model accounts for heterogeneity of preferences with respect to offset products offered in the market. The results provide a quantitative assessment of consumers’ marginal valuation of carbon offsets and a better understanding of individual preferences. The results also point to strong heterogeneity among individuals favoring targeted policy measures to induce voluntary contribution.

Planting Trees for Publicity—How Much Are They Worth?

Corporate marketing departments use trees and forests for advertising and public relations (PR). Trees and forests constitute a tangible symbol of the environment, reinforced by the growing awareness of the role that trees play in preventing climate change. Although the carbon sequestration function of trees is valued in monetary terms, its derivative services to marketing, CSR or HR departments are not (‘greening the image’). We focus on voluntary carbon offsets and other tree-planting activities undertaken by companies, aiming to demonstrate that the value of these derivative services of trees should be considered in monetary terms. Based on a small survey and an analysis of financial data for 10 tree-planting projects in Poland, we estimate this value at USD 7.42 per tree. This value depends on external circumstances, such as the current interest in climate change and ways to prevent it.

Exploring air travellers’ voluntary carbon-offsetting behaviour

This paper advances understanding of consumers who purchase voluntary carbon offsets (VCOs) for flights by profiling the socio-demographic characteristics of VCO purchasers in Australia and the UK and investigating their environmental attitudes and beliefs. Earlier research shows that there is confusion and lack of clarity around VCO schemes, yet small numbers of consumers continue to purchase them. Using an online panel survey of 502 respondents, this research considers whether those who purchase VCOs can be considered to be ecocentric, and whether they share a similar socio-demographic profile with those engaging in other forms of pro-environmental behaviour. The results suggest three groups: “Ecocentrics” (36%), “Middle of the Road” (31%) and “Anthropocentrics” (33%). While VCO purchasers appear to be ecocentric, not all ecocentric respondents purchased VCOs and, additionally, those who did purchase, appear to have a different socio-demographic profile from others engaging in pro-environmental behaviour. The study suggests that this segment of the flying public, already willing to contribute towards climate change mitigation, may be the best segment to target with behavioural change messages intended to encourage the structural changes in travel choices required to mitigate climate change. Earlier suggestions that older females are more likely to purchase VCOs are not supported.

Voluntary Carbon Offsets a Solution for Reducing Tourism Emissions? Assessment of Communication Aspects and Mitigation Potential

Contrary to most sectors, to date the tourism and aviation industries have not managed to level off greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, effective mitigation through technological innovation or structural and behavioural change cannot be expected shortly. Airlines and tourism companies appear to use carbon offsetting as a last resort. However, offsetting is generally acknowledged as a second-best solution for mitigating emissions, after reducing energy use. This paper seeks to determine the mitigation potential of voluntary carbon offsetting by comparing public and industry awareness of climate change and aviation emissions, and attitudes to various mitigation measures with relevant online communication by 64 offset providers. Methods were a literature review and online content analyses. Overall, the gaps that were identified between awareness, attitude and actual behaviour are not bridged by provider communication. From this perspective, the mitigation potential of voluntary carbon offsetting for achieving reductions of tourism transport emissions is estimated as low. The same conclusion is reached by comparing carbon dioxide volumes of flight offsets with actual air travel emissions. Current sales of flight offsets compensate less than 1% of all aviation emissions.

The Al Gore effect: An Inconvenient Truth and voluntary carbon offsets

This paper examines the relationship between climate change awareness and household behavior by testing whether Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth caused an increase in the purchase of voluntary carbon offsets. I find that in the two months following the film's release, zip codes within a 10-mile radius of a zip code where the film was shown experienced a 50 percent relative increase in the purchase of voluntary carbon offsets. During other times, offset purchasing patterns for zip codes inside the 10-mile radius were similar to the patterns of zip codes outside the 10-mile radius. There is, however, little evidence that individuals who purchased an offset due to the film purchased them again a year later.

EXPLAINING THE PRICE OF VOLUNTARY CARBON OFFSETS

This paper identifies factors that explain the large variability in the price of voluntary carbon offsets. We estimate hedonic price functions using a variety of provider- and project-level characteristics as explanatory variables. We find that providers located in Europe sell offsets at prices that are approximately 30% higher than providers located in either North America or Australasia. Contrary to what one might expect, offset prices are generally higher, by roughly 20%, when projects are located in developing or least-developed nations. But this result does not hold for forestry-based projects. We find evidence that forestry-based offsets sell at lower prices, and the result is particularly strong when projects are located in developing or least-developed nations. Offsets that are certified under the Clean Development Mechanism or the Gold Standard, and therefore qualify for emission reductions under the Kyoto Protocol, sell at a premium of more than 30%; however, third-party certification from the Voluntary Carbon Standard, one of the popular certifiers, is associated with a price discount. Variables that have no effect on offset prices are the number of projects that a provider manages and a provider's status as for-profit or not-for-profit.

Climate Law and Developing Countries: Legal and Policy Challenges for the World Economy

Contents: 1. Introduction: Climate Law and Developing Countries Benjamin J. Richardson, Yves Le Bouthillier, Heather McLeod-Kilmurray and Stepan Wood PART I: CLIMATE JUSTICE 2. Climate Change, Differentiated Responsibilities and State Responsibility: Devising Novel Legal Strategies for Damage Caused by Climate Change Sumudu Atapattu 3. India's Constitutional Challenge: A Less Visible Climate Change Catastrophe Deepa Badrinarayana 4. Promoting Justice within the International Legal System: Prospects for Climate Refugees Angela Williams 5. Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the South Pacific: The Need for Regional and Local Strategies Eric Kwa PART II: EXPANDING THE SCOPE OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE LEGAL REGIMES 6. Supporting Adaptation in Developing Countries at the National and Global Levels Jolene Lin 7. Designing a REDD Mechanism: The TDERM Triptych Claire Stockwell, William Hare and Kirsten Macey 8. The Role of Marine 'Forests' and Soils as Carbon Sinks: Enhanced Bio-Sequestration as a Mitigation Strategy to Help Avoid Dangerous Climate Change Robert Fowler 9. Adaptation to Climate Change to Save Biodiversity: Lessons Learned from African and European Experiences Saja Erens, Jonathan Verschuuren and Kees Bastmeijer PART III: THE CLEAN DEVELOPMENT MECHANISM AND MITIGATION STRATEGIES 10. The Deadlock of the Clean Development Mechanism: Caught between Sustainability, Environmental Integrity and Economic Efficiency Christina Voigt 11. Beautifying Africa for the Clean Development Mechanism: Legal and Institutional Issues Considered Damilola S. Olawuyi 12. Policy and Legal Dimensions of CDM Projects in the Forestry Sector: Implications for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in Uganda Emmanuel B. Kasimbazi 13. Brazilian Policy on Biodiesels: A Sound Means of Mitigating Climate Change? Solange Teles da Silva and Carolina Dutra PART IV: CLIMATE POLICY BRIDGING THE NORTH AND SOUTH 14. Improving Citizen Responsibility in the North and its Consequences for the South: Voluntary Carbon Offsets and Government Involvement Marjan Peeters 15. Climate and Trade in a Divided World: Can Measures Adopted in the North End Up Shaping Climate Change Legislative Frameworks in the South? Francesco Sindico 16. Climate Change in the European Union Development Cooperation Policy Marie-Pierre Lanfranchi and Sandrine Maljean-Dubois Index

Governing the carbon offset market

AbstractCarbon offsets are produced and sold under the international climate change regime (the United Nations Kyoto Protocol) and also within an expanding voluntary offset market in which companies and individuals can voluntarily opt to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. The volume of carbon produced and consumed within compliance and voluntary markets has grown dramatically in the last 5 years, raising a number of governance challenges. This Focus Article gives an overview of the governance of the compliance and voluntary carbon offset markets, and considers the implications of their different governance structures for addressing climate change. It assesses recent changes in the governance of the voluntary carbon offset market in response to concerns about the credibility and robustness of voluntary carbon offsets. Several voluntary offset standards were launched in 2007–2009, including the Voluntary Carbon Standard and the Gold Standard. National governments have also taken regulatory action on voluntary offsets, notably the UK government who took the controversial decision in early 2009 to endorse only compliance carbon offsets for use in the UK voluntary market. The UK government's attempt to regulate the voluntary offset market provides a useful case through which to explore some of the inherent tensions in effectively governing the carbon offset market. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > Private Governance of Climate Change

Beyond CO<SUB align=right>2lonialism: the potential for fair trade certification to embrace voluntary carbon offsets

Carbon offset projects are a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Some offset projects cause immediate harm to the people and environment of developing countries while others provide questionable returns in terms of actual carbon capture and storage. Finally, carbon offset projects create barriers to industrialisation for developing countries. All of these challenges must be addressed if carbon offsets are to meet the promise of serving as both an effective solution to climate change and a development mechanism for countries in the global South. This paper examines the potential for fair trade to embrace and certify voluntary carbon offsets, thereby ensuring ethical, socially responsible offsets.

Carbon Offsetting: Sustaining Consumption?

In this paper we examine how theories of sustainable and ethical consumption help us to understand a new, rapidly expanding type of consumer product designed to mitigate climate change: carbon offsets. The voluntary carbon offset market grew by 200% between 2005 and 2006, and there are now over 150 retailers of voluntary carbon offsets worldwide. Our analysis concentrates on the production and consumption of carbon offsets, drawing on ideas from governmentality and political ecology about how narratives and technologies are used to create particular types of consumer subjectivities and shape consumer choice. We critically examine three narratives that offset producers are using to position carbon offsets and examine how these narratives are shaping circuits of carbon offset production and consumption. We assess the implications for the future governance of voluntary carbon offset markets and for the study of alternative consumption.

Willingness to pay for carbon offset certification and co-benefits among (high-)flying young adults in the UK

Voluntary carbon offsets represent a growing share of the carbon market as a whole, and have the potential to contribute to meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets and reducing anthropogenic climate change. Certain offset project types may also deliver co-benefits including safeguarding or promoting biodiversity, supporting human development and poverty reduction, and enabling market and technology development in low-carbon sectors. These co-benefits might encourage consumers to participate in the voluntary offset market, depending on their effects both on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for offsets and on implementation costs. However, the offset market is not yet sufficiently developed to give a clear indication of consumer WTP for offsets with varying attributes. This exploratory stated preference study therefore uses a choice experiment to estimate WTP for certified and uncertified offsets, with or without these specific co-benefits, in an aviation context. It is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to do so. Our results suggest that uptake of voluntary offsets may be encouraged by investing in projects with co-benefits and by emphasising those co-benefits to consumers. They also suggest that certification regimes will add value to offsets, helping compensate for increased costs, provided that consumers are made fully aware of them.

Swedish air travellers and voluntary carbon offsets: towards the co-creation of environmental value?

There is now a broad consensus that aviation is a significant contributor to global warming. One question that thus arises is whether voluntary carbon-offsetting schemes can make a significant contribution to mitigating the contribution of aviation to climate change. These schemes have seen considerable growth in recent years, even though the overall amount of emissions offset remains negligible: tour operators and airlines offering voluntary carbon offsets report that customers show limited interested in these schemes. In the light of this, the article seeks to discuss the implications of voluntary carbon-offsetting schemes as a means of compensating emissions from aviation, and goes on to assess air travellers' knowledge of and attitudes to these schemes. Structural problems that have to be overcome to create broader interest in voluntary carbon offsetting are discussed in the context of co-creation of environmental value at the level of economic transactions between individual passengers (consumers) and airlines (producers), based on a survey of Swedish air travellers.

Voluntary Carbon Offsetting: An Overview

This article looks at the voluntary carbon offsetting market by considering how the market works and what it is linked to. It briefly considers some of the types of offsetting projects producing credits in the voluntary market and analyses why consumers and businesses are getting involved. As the market is unregulated, many projects generating carbon credits have sprung up and this has brought with it associated advantages and disadvantages,which are also discussed.

Accumulation by Decarbonization and the Governance of Carbon Offsets

This article examines the governance of international carbon offsets, analyzing the political economy of the origins and governance of offsets. We examine how the governance structures of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism and unregulated voluntary carbon offsets differ in regulation and in complexity of the chain that links consumers and reducers of carbon, with specific consequences for carbon reductions, development, and the ability to provide “accumulation by decarbonization.” We show how carbon offsets represent capital-accumulation strategies that devolve governance over the atmosphere to supranational and nonstate actors and to the market.

Voluntary Carbon Offsetting Schemes for Aviation: Efficiency, Credibility and Sustainable Tourism

Tourism is becoming increasingly dependent on air transport. Recent scientific work has pointed out the significant and growing contribution of air transport to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Obligations to reduce GHG emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and post-Kyoto instruments might make transport more expensive or even restricted in the future. This paper examines these questions and the issues raised by the increasing number of organisations offering voluntary carbon offsetting schemes as a means of compensating for emissions of GHGs, mostly from transport, which could help to stabilise or reduce emissions. There are substantial differences between the approaches chosen by these organisations in terms of their calculation of emissions, compensation measures, price levels, company structures and evaluation processes. The paper discusses these differences and their consequences for the efficiency and credibility of voluntary carbon offsetting schemes. Within this increasingly contested area, there is general agreement that increased clarity and regulation is required.