Scaling the Voluntary Carbon Market: Opportunities in Superpollutants

Wednesday, April 15 | 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM | Location: Cambridge Innovation Center, Havana Room

Carbon offsets within the voluntary carbon market (VCM) have emerged as a mechanism to offset the hard-to-abatement emissions leading to climate change. Here, companies attempt to meet their net-zero goals by outsourcing decarbonization through the purchase of carbon offsets as they undertake the more challenging phase out of operational and supply chain related fossil fuels. Carbon markets broaden participation in climate change mitigation, channeling private capital towards critical emission reduction and removal pathways which may not have otherwise been financed. However, the VCM faces unprecedented challenges to scale. Pathways which limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2050, necessitate simultaneously reaching net-zero emissions and scaling up nascent carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies from tens of million tons per year to tens of billion tons per year. Given that this scale of decarbonization far exceeds current market mobilization, strategic allocation of limited capital towards solutions that deliver near-term temperature reductions is critical.

Superpollutant mitigation, such as methane emission reduction, is a promising opportunity to mitigate near-term warming at low-cost. Yet, despite contributing to over a third of recent warming, superpollutant mitigation constitutes less than 12% of all offsets purchased in the VCM.

Therefore, in this interactive workshop we will:

1. Assess where superpollutant mitigation is strategically important across multiple sector-specific supply chains and waste streams.
2. Identify the barriers associated with corporate investment superpollutant mitigation.
3. Build an actionable roadmap identifying the most promising and immediately deployable levers companies can use to reduce warming from superpollutants this decade.
4. Develop a shared, yet differentiated understanding of where superpollutant mitigation fits within a corporate sustainability portfolio, and what principles should guide its use alongside emissions reductions and long-term removals.

Goals: 

• Identify barriers resulting in the underutilization of superpollutant mitigation in the VCM (primarily associated with methane mitigation)
• Ideate how the VCM can most effectively mobilize finance for superpollutants by exploring financial mechanisms that could accelerate deployment. 
• Build a practical framework/ roadmap on how private actors can incorporate superpollutants into their broader decarbonization portfolios.