Carbon Offsetting Debate - A summary

Author

Luke Jelleyman

The OCS’ 6th week event highlighted a topical issue brought up during the Paris Agreement- should various economic actors such as member states and companies be responsible for their past emissions, and therefore be forced to compensate for such emissions? Emissions trading is a government-mandated market approach that would provide incentives for achieving such reductions in emissions, through the purchase or allocation of a finite number of permits and has its largest implementation within the EU covering 45% of emissions and 12k installations. Offsets are a similar concept, whereby companies earn emission rights not through purchasing but rather the implementation of a clean energy scheme elsewhere when they exceed their current permitted emissions. These economic policies were analysed in detail by our two expert speakers, Ben Caldecott and Pedro Moura Costa.

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