Voluntary Carbon Markets

The Ecosystem Marketplace seeks to become the world’s leading source of

information on markets and payment schemes for ecosystem services (services
such as water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity). We believe that
by providing reliable information on prices, regulation, science, and other
market-relevant factors, markets for ecosystem services will one day become
a fundamental part of our economic system, helping give value to environ-
mental services that, for too long, have been taken for granted. In providing
useful market information, we hope not only to facilitate transactions, but
also to catalyze new thinking, spur the development of new markets, and
achieve effective and equitable nature conservation. The Ecosystem Market-
place is a project of Forest Trends.
www.ecosystemmarketplace.com
 Voluntary Carbon Markets
An International Business Guide to
What They Are and How They Work

Written and edited by

Ricardo Bayon, Amanda Hawn
and
Katherine Hamilton
First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA in 2007
For a full list of publications please contact:
Earthscan
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Earthscan is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright # 2007 Bayon, Hawn & Hamilton – Forest Trends

Foreword # 2007 Al Gore. Published by Taylor & Francis .

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein.
In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety
of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN: 978-1-84407-417-0 hardback

Typesetting by 4word Ltd, Bristol

Cover design by Andrew Corbett

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Voluntary carbon markets : an international business guide to what they are and how
they work / edited by Ricardo Bayon, Amanda Hawn and Katherine Hamilton.
p. cm
Covers the U.S., Europe, Australia, Canada, and Asia, what the markets are, how they
work, and their business potential to help slow climate change.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84407-417-4 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 1-84407-417-X (hardback)
1. Emissions trading. 2. Environmental impact charges. 3. Carbon dioxide mitigation–
Economic aspects. 4. Greenhouse gases–Economic aspects. 5. Climatic changes–
Economic aspects. I. Bayon, Ricardo. II. Hawn, Amanda. III. Hamilton, Katherine.
HC79.P55V65 2006
363.7380 746–dc22 2006029027
 Contents

List of Figures, Tables and Boxes vii

List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
Foreword by Al Gore xiv
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xvi
Introduction xviii

1 The Big Picture 1

Market theory 3
Carbon markets 4
Voluntary carbon market 11

2 Understanding Supply and Demand in the Voluntary

Carbon Market
A look at the supply chain 18
How does the market work? 29

3 How Does the Voluntary Carbon Market Relate to the

US REC Market? 38
Walker L. Wright
What are RECs? 39
The voluntary market 41
Certify it 44
Market trends 45
RECs and the voluntary carbon market 46
What the experts think 48
Renewable Energy Certificates to carbon offsets: What’s
the right exchange rate? (Mark Trexler) 48
Renewable Energy Certificates and carbon offsets: What informed
customers need to know (Robert Harmon) 50
Clearing the air: the impact of carbon cap-and-trade
regulations on the voluntary market for renewable energy
(Robert Harmon) 53
vi Voluntary Carbon Markets

4 The Voluntary Carbon Market: What the Experts Think 64

An economist’s perspective on the voluntary carbon market:
Useful but not sufficient (Janet Peace) 64
A conservationist’s perspective on the voluntary carbon market:
Can it help us overcome inertia? (Ben Vitale) 67
A project developer’s perspective on the voluntary carbon
market: Carbon sequestration in the Sierra Gorda of Mexico
(David Patrick Ross and Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo) 71
A policy perspective on the voluntary carbon market:
Seeding a real market for emissions reductions (Ben Henneke) 74
A retailer’s perspective on the voluntary carbon market:
Voluntary action obligatory for effective strategy on emissions
(Jonathan Shopley) 78
A consultant’s perspective on the voluntary carbon market:
Does quality matter in environmental commodity markets?
(Mark Trexler) 81
An investor’s perspective on the voluntary carbon market
(David Brand and Marisa Meizlish) 87
An investor’s perspective: The challenges ahead for scaling the
voluntary carbon market (Alexander Rau) 90
A buyer’s perspective on the voluntary carbon market
(Erin Meezan) 93
A bank’s perspective on the voluntary carbon market: From risk
to opportunity – the HSBC carbon neutral experience
(Lorna Slade) 95

5 A Glance into the Future of the Voluntary Carbon Market 101

A new outlet 101
Gourmet carbon 102
The broad spectrum 103
Unanswered questions 104
Moving toward answers 105

Appendices
1 Offset Project Types 108
2 Examples of Project Verifiers 116
3 Standards 118
4 Examples of Offset Credit Retailers 125
5 Examples of Institutional Buyers 151

Index 159
 List of Figures, Tables and Boxes

Figures
1.1 The greenhouse effect 2
1.2 Growth in the global carbon market 7
2.1 Simplified supply chain of the retail carbon market 18
2.2 A model of common types of transactions in the voluntary
carbon market 29
2.3 A quick sketch of the different kinds of buyers in the voluntary
carbon market 31
3.1 A map of the RPS standards in the United States 40
3.2 Current input-based cap-and-trade system 56
3.3 Current system with 500GWh gas added 56
3.4 Current system with 500GWh wind added 57
3.5 Output-based system with 500GWh natural gas added 58
3.6 Output-based system with 500GWh of wind added 59
3.7 Load-based cap-and-trade 60
3.8 Load-based cap-and-trade with 500GWh of wind added 61
4.1 US GHG emissions 65
A1.1 Commonly used emission reduction and sequestration projects 108

Tables
1.1 Voluntary carbon market size 14
2.1 Project types generating carbon credits for the voluntary carbon
market 20
2.2 Major certification programmes/standards available or soon to
be available for the voluntary carbon offset market 23
2.3 Global sources of pressure in the private sector 33
2.4 Regional sources of pressure in the private sector:
Europe 33
2.5 Regional sources of pressure in the private sector:
North America 33
3.1 REC sales in voluntary markets 42
viii Voluntary Carbon Markets

3.2 Certified REC customers and sales for leading voluntary certifier
Green-e 42
3.3 Utility use of RECs to supply green pricing programmes 43
3.4 Comparison of alternative application systems 62
A2.1 Examples of project verifiers 116
A4.1 Examples of offset credit retailers 125
A5.1 Examples of institutional buyers 152

Boxes
1.1 A look at the science 1
1.2 The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) 5
2.1 The additionality debate 24
4.1 Case Study: Mantadia-Zahamena corridor restoration and
protection project, Republic of Madagasca 70
 List of Contributors

Dr David Brand is the founder and Managing Director of New Forests, a

forestry asset management and advisory business based in Sydney, Australia
(see www.newforests.com.au). The firm represents institutional and private
equity investors in forestry and land management, specializing in investment
programmes that can link to environmental markets related to carbon, water
and biodiversity. New Forests also operates an advisory business that supports
environmental market policies, business plans and transactions, advising both
buyers and sellers of carbon offsets.

Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo, a former music teacher, founded the Grupo
Ecologico Sierra Gorda in 1989 along with her husband and a group of neigh-
bours. The first director of the Grupo Ecologico, she led the effort to obtain the
decree of the Sierra Gorda as a Biosphere Reserve, obtained in 1997. As a result
of this, she was named by the President of Mexico as the first director of the
Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve. A recognized social entrepreneur, Ruiz is
an outspoken advocate for the development of payments for environmental
services programmes that work in areas of extreme poverty. She is a member
of the board of directors of Forest Trends.

Robert Harmon serves as Vice President of Renewable Energy Programs for

the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), where he is credited with devel-
oping BEF’s Green Tag program, which began in 1999. In 2001, Robert designed
and launched BEF’s CO2 calculator, the first such calculator on the internet. In
2004, Robert was awarded the national Green Power Pioneer Award for his efforts
to build a thriving and credible Green Tag market in the US. Robert has worked in
the fields of energy productivity and renewables since 1987. He has served as the
Chairman of the American Wind Energy Association’s Small Wind Turbine
Committee, and as a member of the California Emerging Renewables Advisory
Board. He currently serves on the Board of the Northwest Energy Coalition and
on the Advisory Board for the Environment & Alternative Energy Cluster
Working Group of the Puget Sound Regional Council.

Ben Henneke is President of Clean Air Action Corporation (CAAC), a

company that has created NOx , VOC, PM and CO2 reductions. CAAC,
along with the Institute for Environmental Innovation, funds the TIST
x Voluntary Carbon Markets

Programme, which is creating superior CO2 offsets with biodiversity, deserti-

fication and economic development benefits. See www.tist.org.

Erin Meezan is the manager of environmental affairs for Interface. In this

capacity she provides technical assistance and policy support to Interface’s
global business units on a range of sustainability issues. She manages
Interface’s external partnerships with environmental stakeholders on climate
change and renewable energy issues, and advises Interface’s internal Sustain-
ability Council as chair of its renewable energy front. She manages Interface’s
corporate GHG Inventory and their carbon offset portfolio to meet corporate
and product climate neutral goals. She has a Masters in Environmental
Policy and a Juris Doctor from Vermont Law School.

Marisa Meizlish is the Manager of Advisory Services at New Forests and has
a BA in journalism and political science from Northwestern University in
Chicago, and a Masters in Environmental Management from the University
of New South Wales. Marisa previously worked in the news media and
public relations fields in New York and Chicago.

Dr Janet Peace is a senior research fellow in the eEconomics Program at the Pew
Center on Global Climate Change. At Pew she serves as the in-house economist
and together with the Director of Policy Analysis coordinates the Center’s
research on the economic modelling of climate change policies. As part of this
role, she provides quantitative analysis of policy proposals, assessing relative
merits and dissecting underlying assumptions. She is also responsible for
communicating these results to policy makers, academic researchers and business
leaders, by means of reports, briefings and presentations. Prior to coming to the
Pew Center, Dr Peace was the Director of Offsets Development and Industry
Relations with a Canadian non-profit group, Climate Change Central. Here she
worked on issues related to implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, including
the assessment of cost effective, alternative policies that were politically feasible
for industry and all levels of government. Working with these stakeholders,
she was a founding Chair of the National Offsets Quantification Team – an
intergovernmental/industry group currently developing standardized offset
quantification protocols for use in the Canadian offset system.

Dr Alexander Rau is a founding partner of Climate Wedge Ltd Oy. Climate

Wedge Ltd is a scientific adviser to the Cheyne Carbon Fund. The Cheyne
Carbon Fund is a voluntary carbon fund, managed by Cheyne Capital Manage-
ment Limited, which contains a diversified global portfolio of high quality
emissions reductions for use as carbon offsets by corporate and institutional
buyers. Alexander was previously part of the Climate Change Services team
in PricewaterhouseCoopers’s Energy Corporate Finance practice in London,
and subsequently formed an independent consulting group in 2003 with
other senior members to advise clients such as McKinsey & Company and
CSIRO on carbon-related issues. Alexander has a PhD in physics from
Oxford University, where he studied on a Marshall Scholarship and NSF
graduate research fellowship, and a BA from Cornell University.
 List of Contributors xi

David Ross, originally from the state of Ohio in the United States, has worked
for non-profit organizations for more than 18 years, including the American
Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties, the American
Cancer Society, Butte Environmental Council, Parks & Preserves Foundation
and National Wildlife Federation. He has been working on the project of
biodiversity conservation in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve since 2003.
He led negotiations on behalf of Bosque Sustentable for its sale of emission
reduction credits to the United Nations Foundation.

Jonathan Shopley is CEO of The CarbonNeutral Company. Prior to joining

The CarbonNeutral Company in 2001, he held the position of Managing
Director and Vice President in the European division of Arthur D. Little,
the technology and management consulting company. Before entering manage-
ment, Jonathan was an environmental engineer focused on the development of
technologies for the mitigation of environmental impacts in industry.

Lorna Slade is with Group Corporate Affairs, HSBC Holdings plc. HSBC
Holdings is developing a sustainability-focused business in a number of
areas, particularly low carbon energy, water infrastructure, sustainable forestry
and related agricultural commodities. It has also recently announced a strategy
to help its clients respond to the challenges and opportunities of creating a
lower carbon economy – advising them on the implications of climate change
and the business opportunities that arise. In 2005, HSBC was the first bank
to become carbon neutral.

Dr Mark Trexler has more than 25 years of energy and environmental

experience, and has focused on global climate change since joining the World
Resources Institute in 1988. He is now President of Trexler Climate þ
Energy Services, which provides strategic, market and project services to
clients around the world.

Ben Vitale is an experienced finance, operations and technology Executive.

He holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Manage-
ment and a BSc in computer and electrical engineering from Purdue University.
Within Conservation International’s Center for Environmental Leadership in
Business, Ben is driving change to create new financial instruments for
corporations, market makers and financing institutions to fully value and fund
the ecological services provided by intact and restored ecosystems. In particular,
Mr Vitale is working to develop investment grade Conservation Carbon projects
in Madagascar, Ecuador, China, Brazil and other biodiversity hotspots.

Walker Wright is founder of Amelio Solutions, an advisory group focusing

on international photovoltaic project development and financing. Walker has
also served as business development and marketing consultant to Terra Solar
North America and Renewable Energy Solutions, Inc. (RESI), two industry
leaders in thin-film photovoltaic manufacturing and research. Walker holds a
BA from Princeton University and an MSc from The London School of
Economics. Walker lives in San Francisco and does not own a car.
 Acknowledgements

Ricardo Bayon
Like most books, this one is years in the making and has many parents. It was
first born, however, of the realization that, while there was much talk of the
regulated carbon markets, the voluntary markets were being left behind.
This, despite the fact that these markets appeared to be growing rapidly. But
knowing that something needed to be done and getting it done were two very
far-removed destinations. Getting the book to this stage would simply not
have been possible without the unflagging support of Michael Jenkins and
the rest of our colleagues at Forest Trends. Likewise, none of this would
have happened were it not for the generous contributions of many donors to
the Ecosystem Marketplace. These include:
ABN-AMRO
Conservation International
The Citigroup Foundation
O Boticario
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
The Nature Conservancy
The UK Department for International Development
The UK Forestry Commission
The US Forest Service; and
The US Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
Our deepest thanks to all of them for being more than sponsors; for being
true partners.
Also, it should be mentioned that a tremendous amount of work that went
into this book came from a report prepared for the Ecosystem Marketplace by
David Brand and Marisa Meizlich at New Forests. Without that initial
impetus, this book wouldn’t have been possible. Likewise, I would like to
thank, in no particular order, Jason Scott, Colin Le Duc, David Tepper,
Richard Burrett, Mark Trexler, Mark Kenber, Renat Heuberger, Richard
Tipper, Jessica Orrego, Toby Janson-Smith, Jonathan Shopley, Bill Sneyd,
Alex Rau, Michael Schlup, and all of the contributors to this book for their
 Foreword xiii

openness and willingness to share both intelligence and information. Their

excitement for these markets is contagious.
As anyone who knows them (and me) will tell you, this book would not be
half as good as it is if it weren’t for my co-authors, Amanda Hawn and
Katherine Hamilton. Their writing skills and insights make this book what it is.
Last, but never least, I’d like to thank my wife Nathalie and son Luka for
their support and forbearance. This book has meant many hours travelling
and writing; hours away from them. Without a doubt, for me, this has been
the most painful and costly part of the book’s production process. May my
time away from them in the future be brief.

Amanda Hawn
Many people helped with the creation of this book, but Peter Barnes and the
managers of The Mesa Refuge – who provided the space to sit down and finally
write – top the list of those to whom gratitude is due. All of the contributors to
the fourth chapter of the book were generous with their time, energy and
insight – for all of these things, the authors are thankful. In addition to those
whose names appear as guest contributors, we are grateful to the many
others who took the time to return phone calls, give interviews, provide
statistics and generally enrich the information herein. We are grateful, too, to
Marion Yuen who organized a great conference – the Green T Forum –
about many of the topics covered in this book in May of 2006. Walker
Wright and Nathan Larsen stayed up to burn the midnight oil during the
final editing phases of the manuscript, and Rob West and his team at Earthscan
were both patient and professional – thank you. Last but not least, I would like
to extend my gratitude to my co-editors – Ricardo Bayon and Katherine
Hamilton - who are as kind and professional, as they are intelligent.

Katherine Hamilton
My gratitude goes to Ricardo Bayon and Amanda Hawn, two talented and
innovative individuals, for the opportunity to contribute to this exciting project
and the work of Ecosystem Marketplace. I’d also like express my sincere
appreciation to Brad Gentry and many others at the Yale School of Forestry
and Environmental Studies, who fostered my research on carbon markets.
Many thanks also go to the numerous experts in this market, including Lars
Kvale, Mark Trexler, Toby Jason-Smith, John Kunz and Erin Meezan, who
willingly took the time to educate, patiently answer questions and offer insights
into this evolving marketplace.
 Foreword

The serious debate over the climate crisis has now moved on from the question
of whether it exists to how we can craft emergency solutions in order to avoid
catastrophic damage.
The debate over solutions has been slow to start in earnest because some of
our leaders still find it more convenient to deny the reality of the crisis. The
hard truth for the rest of us is that the maximum that seems politically feasible
still falls far short of the minimum that would be effective in solving the crisis.
T. S. Eliot once wrote:
Between the idea and the reality, Between the motion and the act Falls the
Shadow. Between the conception and the creation, Between the emotion and
the response Falls the Shadow.

Leaders must try to shine some light on a pathway through this terra incognita
that lies between where we are and where we need to go.
Outside of the Kyoto Treaty, business leaders in both political parties have
taken significant steps to position their companies as leaders in addressing this
crisis and have adopted policies that not only reduce CO2 but make their
companies zero carbon. Many of them have discovered a way to increase profits
and productivity by eliminating their contributions to global warming pollu-
tion. A key contributor to the movement to freeze and then reduce carbon emis-
sions and a remarkable area of commercial and policy innovation, is the
voluntary carbon market.
Voluntary Carbon Markets by Ricardo Bayon, Amanda Hawn and Katherine
Hamilton describes a remarkable area of innovation in the fight to control global
warming pollution in describing the foundations upon which many promising
carbon reducing strategies have been built. And in the current absence of a
worldwide regulatory system for carbon reduction, Voluntary Carbon Markets
also foreshadows the factors which will drive the next generation of market-
based innovation for fighting global warming pollution. I commend the work
of Ricardo and the Ecosystem Marketplace Group for jumping into T. S. Eliot’s
void and shining the light on this important market.
The climate crisis is not a political issue. It is a moral issue. It affects
the survival of human civilization. It is not a question of left versus right;
it is a question of right versus wrong. Put simply, it is wrong to destroy the
 Foreword xv

habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every generation that
follows ours.
What is motivating millions of global citizens to think differently about
solutions to the climate crisis is the growing realization that this challenge is
bringing us unprecedented opportunity.
This is an opportunity for transcendence, an opportunity to find our better
selves and in rising to meet this challenge, create a better brighter future – a
future worthy of the generations who come after us and who have a right to
be able to depend on us.

Al Gore
 List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

BEF Bonneville Environmental Foundation

CBD Convention on Biological Diversity
CCAR California Climate Action Registry
CCB Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance
CCX Chicago Climate Exchange
CDM Clean Development Mechanism
CDP Carbon Disclosure Project
CEI Community Energy Inc.
CER Certified Emissions Reductions
CERES Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies
CFI Carbon Financial Instruments
CO2 carbon dioxide
COP Conference of the Parties
CRS Center for Resource Solutions
ERT Environmental Resources Trust
ERUs Emission Reduction Units
EU ETS European Union Emission Trading Scheme
EUA European Union Allowances
GHG greenhouse gas
GPS Global Positioning System
GSV Gold Standard for Voluntary Emission Reductions (GSV)
GWh gigawatt hours
GWP global warming potential
IETA International Emissions Trading Association
JI Joint Implementation
kWh kilowatt hour
MDGs Millennium Development Goals
Mt million tons
MWh megawatt hour
NGO non-governmental organization
NOx Nitrogen oxides
NPA Natural Protected Area (in Mexico)
NREL National Renewable Energy Laboratory
NSW New South Wales
 List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PDA Personal Digital Assistant

ppm parts per million
REC Renewable Energy Certificate
RECs Renewable Energy Certificates
REN21 Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century
RGGI Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
ROCs Renewable Obligation Certificates
RPS Renewable Portfolio Standards
SO2 sulfur dioxide
SRI Socially Responsible Investment
tCO2 e metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent
TIST International Small Group and Tree Planting Alliance
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
VCS Voluntary Carbon Standard
VER Verified Emissions Reduction
WBCSD World Business Council for Sustainable Development
WRI World Resources Institute
 Introduction

After decades of searching for creative and innovative ways to protect the
environment, it is time we be brutally honest with ourselves: We are losing
this battle, and losing it in a spectacular way. Every day we hear that yet another
species has gone extinct, yet another acre of forest has disappeared, and yet
another coral reef has been destroyed. And as if that weren’t enough, Earth
has begun warming to such an extent that climate, sea levels, glacial ice, and
even the polar ice caps may be in danger. It is enough to demoralize even the
most determined optimist.
But this is a battle we cannot afford to lose – literally. It is time not to
give up, but to redouble our efforts, to become more creative, and to seek
new ways of working together in situations where confrontation is no longer
effective (if it ever was). The time, in other words, has come for the environ-
mental equivalent of the St Crispin’s day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V, a
call to arms that does not lament how difficult the task is likely to be – or
how few of us there are – but rather pushes us forward into the wild and
scary unknown.
And, in the case of the environmental movement, the scary unknown is the
use of markets and market-like instruments to protect the environment. To be
fair, we now have nearly two decades of experimentation in the use of market
mechanisms for environmental protection. The US Acid Rain trading
scheme began in the 1980s, and various forms of market-like mechanisms for
environmental protection have been tried all over the world.
But the game is one of scale. Protecting one species, one piece of land, one
watershed may be important, but it is no longer enough. The solutions today
need to be systemic, they need to change the way we do business, the way we
eat, drink, sleep, and think. And this is where we think markets may hold the
greatest promise.
Some years ago, we created Forest Trends with a vision. Our vision was
simple: we believed that by bringing loggers, environmentalists, business-
people, academics, and scientists together into the same room to think about
issues that mattered to all of them we would be better able to stem the loss of
the world’s forests. But we soon realized that – effective as this might be – it
was not enough. We saw that in order to save the world’s forests, society
needed to value standing forests as least as highly as it values soybeans, cattle
 Introduction xix

ranches, logging operations, and the other alternatives driving deforestation. As

the saying goes, in the end, we will only protect what we value.
Initially, some of our friends in the environmental movement accused us of
heresy. How could we want to put a value on nature? Nature, they felt, is and
should always be priceless. And while we agree with the sentiment, in practice,
our economic system doesn’t see nature as priceless, it assigns it a value, a value
that is awfully close to zero. In short, our society (or at least our economic
system) is confusing priceless with worthless.
Having come to the realization that we needed to ‘internalize the economic
value’ (to use the academic jargon) of nature, we quickly saw that one of the
most effective ways to achieve this was through the use of markets or market-
like instruments.
And so in 2000 we brought together a small group of people from around the
world in the beautiful mountains of New South Wales, Australia, in a town
called Katoomba, to discuss the role markets and payments for ecosystem
services had to play in forest conservation. True to our roots, we made sure
this group included people from all walks of life: bankers, businesspeople,
government officials, academics, community leaders, non-profits . . . the
entire spectrum. And from this meeting was born the Katoomba Group. At
that time few people were talking about markets and payments for ecosystem
services. Remember, this was five years before the European Union’s
Emissions Trading Scheme was but a glint in anyone’s eye. Even Kyoto, at
the time, looked set to flounder.
In this way, the Katoomba Group became a stimulating place to refine our
vision, define our strategies, and so we continued to meet once or twice a year in
either a large market for forest goods and services (London, Tokyo, Switzer-
land), or a large producer of these services (Brazil, Vancouver, Thailand). As
time went by the group grew and our understanding of our subject deepened.
We realized that what we were talking about went much further than forests,
that it was a systemic problem affecting all ecosystems, and we realized that
in order to thrive, environmental markets need science, finance, expertise,
and, most especially, information. That is why we created the Ecosystem
Marketplace, a tool that we hope will become a kind of ‘Bloomberg’ for the
world’s environmental markets.
All of this is a long-winded attempt to give you a bit of the background for
the book you now hold in your hands. It was born of environmental need and it
seeks to further deepen our understanding of one portion of the carbon markets
that we think has been grossly overlooked: the voluntary carbon market.
But it is part of something bigger, part of our attempts to come up with (and
better understand) a series of tools – environmental markets and market-like
mechanisms – that may help us succeed where other tools have so far failed
to conserve the ecosystems on which we all depend. So, once more into the
breach, but this time, let’s arm ourselves in the most effective way possible.
Let’s use markets – both voluntary and regulated – and payments for ecosystem
services where they make sense to help us address climate change and other
seemingly insurmountable problems. Because – like King Henry said at
xx Voluntary Carbon Markets

Agincourt – one day, we will look back and either be happy we did, or else wish
we had; the choice is ours.

Michael Jenkins Ricardo Bayon

President, Managing Director
Forest Trends Ecosystem Marketplace
 1

The Big Picture

For hurricane watchers, 2005 was a year for the record books. A startling
number of hurricanes hit the Gulf of Mexico, causing over US$100 billion
in damages. Hurricane Katrina alone displaced 1 million people and left
1,000 dead.
The 2004 hurricane season was a bit less horrific in terms of raw numbers,
but what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in oddity; the year was marked by
an event some believed to be a scientific impossibility, namely a hurricane in the
southern Atlantic. For over 40 years, weather satellites circling the globe have
seen hurricanes and cyclones in the north Atlantic, and on both sides of the
equator in the Pacific, but never – until 2004 – in the southern Atlantic. On
28 March, Hurricane Catarina slammed into Brazil, proving that recent
weather patterns are starkly different from those of the 20th century.
What is going on? Are these freak occurrences or signs of something bigger?
While there is no level of data or anecdote that that will satisfy hardened
sceptics, many scientists now believe that the storms of 2004 and 2005 are
merely symptoms of a bigger problem: global climate change. As the Earth’s
average temperature grows warmer, they say, atmospheric and oceanic patterns
are beginning to shift, fueling increased storms and unusual weather events.
Temperatures at the planet’s surface increased by an estimated 1.4 degrees
Fahrenheit (8F) (0.8 degrees Celsius (8C)) between 1900 and 2005. The past
decade was the hottest on record during the last 150 years, and 2005 was the
hottest year of the last 150 years (Linden, 2006).
Again, sceptics argue that this is part of the natural variability in the Earth’s
temperature, but the majority of scientists now agree that it is more likely due to
increased concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the
atmosphere.

Box 1.1 A Look at the Science

Prior to the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, the atmospheric
concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) was approximately 280 parts per million
(ppm). Today, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has risen to 380ppm, largely
2 Voluntary Carbon Markets

because of anthropogenic emissions from the burning of fossil fuels used in

transportation, agriculture, energy generation and the production of everyday
materials. The loss of natural carbon sinks (places where carbon is pulled out of
the atmosphere and trapped either in geological formations or in biological
organisms) – on land and in the ocean – is also contributing to increased levels
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The rapid rise in concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere concerns

scientists because CO2 is a greenhouse gas. GHGs allow sunlight to enter the
atmosphere, but they keep the heat released from the Earth’s surface from
getting back out.
While recent trends show a gradual warming trend of the Earth’s surface,
some scientists fear future climate change will not be linear. ‘The Earth’s
system’, says Wallace Broecker, Newberry Professor of Earth and Environ-
mental Sciences at Columbia University, ‘has sort of proven that if it’s given
small nudges, it can take large leaps. By tripling the amount of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere, we are giving the system a huge nudge.’ (Hawn, 2004).
The ‘large leaps’ to which Broecker refers are better known as ‘abrupt
climate changes’ in the world of science. Over the course of thousands of
years, such changes have left geological records of themselves in ice cores
and stalagmites. These records show that past temperature swings on our
planet have been as large as 188F (ÿ7.88C) and have occurred over time
scales as short as two years.
Using the analogy of a car moving along an unknown road at night, Klaus
Lackner, a geophysicist at Columbia University, argues that our incomplete
understanding of the natural system is no excuse for delaying action: ‘We
sort of vaguely see in the headlights a sharp turn. There are two possibilities.

Figure 1.1 The greenhouse effect

Source: Pew Center on Global Climate Change (2001) ‘The greenhouse effect’, In
Claussen, E. (ed) Climate Change: Science, Strategies and Solutions, Brill, Boston
 The Big Picture 3

You can say: ‘I’m going to ignore that and keep going at 90 miles an hour
because you cannot prove to me that the curve is not banked and therefore I
might make it . . . or you can put on the brakes.’ (Hawn, 2004).
Noting that there could be an oil slick and no bank to the road, Lackner says
the good news is that we have the technology to put on the brakes. He adds,
however, that if we want to stabilize the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at
double the natural level (roughly 500ppm, which still might leave us with an
ice-free Arctic Ocean), we have to start now (Hawn, 2004).

Market theory
To start towards stabilized levels of atmospheric CO2 , policy makers argue that
we not only need to prime the research pump behind clean energy technologies
and emission reduction strategies, we also must generate the market pull for
them.
Enter the global carbon market. Many think markets for emissions reduc-
tions are among the most innovative and cost-effective means society has of
creating a market pull for new clean energy technologies while, at the same
time, putting a price on pollution and thereby providing incentives for
people to emit less.
The theory is that carbon markets are able to achieve this magic because
they help channel resources toward the most cost effective means of reducing
GHG emissions. At the same time, they punish (monetarily) those who emit
more than an established quota, and reward (again, monetarily) those who
emit less. In so doing, they encourage people to emit less and change the
economics of energy technologies, making technologies that emit less carbon
more competitive vis-à-vis their carbon-intensive counterparts.
There is other magic at work as well: By turning units of pollution into units
of property, the system makes it possible to exchange pollution from Cape
Town with pollution from Cape Cod. If business managers find reducing
their company’s emissions too costly, they can buy excess reductions from a
facility where reductions are less expensive. The bigger the market, the
theory goes, the greater the likelihood that efficiencies will be found.
By aggregating information about the value of carbon allowances, the
market is sending signals to potential polluters. In today’s European emissions
market, for instance, emitting 1 ton of CO2 has in the past cost polluters
anywhere from under 7€ to 30€ (Hamilton, 2006). In a world where pollution
has no price, the default decision will always be to pollute. In a world where
pollution costs between 7€ and 30€ a ton, the decision is no longer quite so
easy. Polluters suddenly must consider a new suite of options: do they
accept the cost of added pollution, change fuel mixes or simply conserve
energy?
Once markets take shape, emitters have a variety of options available to
them. If they believe they can reduce emissions cheaply by changing produc-
tion processes or experimenting with new technology, they have an incentive
4 Voluntary Carbon Markets

to do so. If they believe they can change their production process, but that this
will take time, emitters can purchase credits up front in the hopes that, down
the line, they will be able to make them back through emissions reduction
technologies. If, on the other hand, emitters believe they will emit more in
the long run, they can buy credits now (or options on credits once secondary
markets develop) for use later. In short, the system enables the trading of
emissions across temporal as well as geographic boundaries, a basic benefit of
markets.
The market-based approach also allows other third-party players, such as
speculators, to enter the fray. By agreeing to take on market risks in exchange
for possible paybacks, speculators assume the risks that others are either
unwilling or unable to shoulder. Other interested parties also can get involved.
If, for example, an environmental group wants to see emissions decrease below
a regulated target, they can raise money to buy and retire emissions allowances.
This drives up the cost of emissions and can force utilities to become more
efficient.
It is, of course, important to note that some people dispute the net gain of
such benefits, and others feel that markets allow companies to ‘greenwash’
previously tarnished environmental reputations without changing their
behaviour in important ways. ‘Carbon offsets are based on fictitious carbon
accounting, and can by themselves not make a company carbon neutral’,
argues Larry Lohmann of The Corner House, the UK based non-
governmental organization (NGO). ‘The practice of offsetting is slowing
down innovation at home and abroad and diverting attention away from the
root causes of climate change.’ (Wright, 2006).
This debate notwithstanding, experimentation with environmental markets
is now widespread. Ever since the US established the first large-scale environ-
mental market (to regulate emissions of gases that lead to acid rain), we have
seen environmental markets emerging to trade in everything from wetlands
to woodpeckers.

Carbon markets
The term carbon market refers to the buying and selling of emissions permits
that have been either distributed by a regulatory body or generated by GHG
emission reductions projects. Six GHGs are generally included in ‘carbon’
markets: CO2 , methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydro fluoro-
carbons and perfluorocarbons.
GHG emission reductions are traded in carbon credits, which represent
the reduction of GHGs equal to one metric ton of CO2 (tCO2 e), the most
common GHG. A group of scientists associated with the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined the global warming potential
(GWP) of each gas in terms of its equivalent in tons of carbon dioxide (i.e.
tCO2 e) over the course of 100 years. For example, the GHG methane has a
GWP roughly 23 times higher than CO2 , hence one ton of methane equals
 The Big Picture 5

about 23 tCO2 e. Likewise, other gases have different equivalences in terms

of tCO2 e, some of them (perfluorocarbons) are worth thousands of tons of
CO2 e.
GHG emissions reduction credits can be accrued through two different
types of transactions. In project-based transactions, emissions credits are the
result of a specific carbon offset project. Allowance-based transactions involve
the trading of issued allowances created and allocated by regulators under a
cap-and-trade regime. In cap-and-trade, the regulatory authority caps the
quantity of emissions that participants are permitted to emit and issues a
number of tradable allowance units equal to the cap. Participants who reduce
their emissions internally beyond required levels can sell unused allowances
to other participants at whatever price the market will bear.
Carbon markets can be separated into two major categories: the compliance
(or regulatory) and voluntary markets. Because the voluntary market inherently
does not operate under a universal cap, all carbon credits purchased in the
voluntary market are project-based transactions (the exception here is the
Chicago Climate Exchange).

Box 1.2 The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX)

Richard Sandor, a former chief economist at the Chicago Board of Trade, launched,
‘North America’s only voluntary, legally binding rules-based greenhouse gas
emission reduction and trading system’ in 2003 (www.chicagoclimatex.com/). He
called the trading platform the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).
The exchange refers to the carbon credits it trades as carbon financial instru-
ments (CFIs, also measured in tCO2 e) and restricts trading to members who
have voluntarily signed up to its mandatory reductions policy. During the pilot
phase (2003–2006) members agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 1 per
cent a year from a baseline determined by their average emissions during 1998
to 2001 (see www.chicagoclimatex.com/). The current goal (Phase II) is for
members to reduce their total emissions by 6 per cent below the baseline by
2010. Hence, members who have been participating for the past four years only
need to reduce an additional 2 per cent, while new members need to reduce
6 per cent during this time (Hamilton, 2006).
Like the carbon market in general, CCX trades six different types of GHGs
converted to tCO2 e. Unlike most of the voluntary carbon market, the majority
of trading on CCX is allowance based, rather than project based. In other
words, CCX operates as a cap-and-trade system in which members agree to cap
emissions at a stated level and then trade allowances with other participants if
they are either under or over their target. While CCX allows members to
invest in offset projects as a means of meeting emissions targets, just 1/50th of
the transactions taking place on the exchange are for CFIs generated through
offset projects (Walsh, 2006). The majority of the credits are allowance-based
credits, created by member companies internally reducing their emissions. When
6 Voluntary Carbon Markets

and where offset projects are used, CCX requires that an approved third party
organization verify that the project’s emissions reductions are real and that they
meet standards set by the exchange.
Since its launch in late 2003, CCX has grown in membership from 19 institutions
to over 131 institutions. Ford Motor, International Paper, IBM, American Electric
Power, the City of Chicago, the City of Portland, the City of Oakland, the State
of New Mexico, the World Resources Institute and the Rocky Mountain Institute
are just a few of its wide range of members from the business, governmental and
philanthropic sectors. CCX traded 1.45 million tCO2 e in 2005 for a total value of
US$2.7 million. The average weighted price per tCO2 e in 2005 was US$1.95.
Trading prices spiked in the first quarter of 2006 to US$5.00 when post-2006
vintages were announced and – according to sources – a US Senator began
openly speculating that the US. might someday adopt CCX as its de-facto
carbon-trading scheme. The first quarter of 2006 also saw higher trading volumes,
with a total US$1.25 million exchanged (Capoor and Ambrosi, 2006).
In 2005, CCX created the European Carbon Exchange (ECX), a wholly-owned
subsidiary which has since become the largest exchange trading carbon credits on
the EU Emission Trading Scheme (see below). And CCX announced the creation of
three new exchanges in 2006: the Montreal Climate Exchange (MCX), the North-
eastern Climate Exchange (NECX), and the New York Climate Exchange (NYCX).
These initiatives are presumably designed to interface with carbon credit schemes
in Canada and with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the US
Northeast.

Compliance carbon markets

There are now a number of regulated cap-and-trade carbon markets around
the world. The Kyoto Protocol underpins in one way or another most of
these markets, although it is directly concerned only with the biggest of
them. Ratified by 163 countries, the Protocol is a legally binding treaty com-
mitting industrialized countries to reduce their collective GHGs by 5.4 per
cent below 1990 levels by 2012. The Kyoto Protocol’s authors created three
major ‘flexibility mechanisms’ in order to provide the treaty’s signatories
with a cost-effective means of achieving their greenhouse gas emission reduc-
tion targets. These mechanisms are the basis for the regulated international
compliance carbon market:

. Emissions trading: An allowance-based transaction system that enables

countries with emissions targets to purchase carbon credits from one another
in order to fulfill their Kyoto commitments.
. Joint Implementation (JI): A project-based transaction system that allows
developed countries to purchase carbon credits from greenhouse gas reduc-
tion projects implemented in another developed country or in a country
with an economy in transition (specifically from the formerly communist
 The Big Picture 7

countries of Eastern Europe). Emissions from these JI projects are referred

to as Emission Reduction Units (ERUs).
. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM): Another project-based transaction
system through which industrialized countries can accrue carbon credits by
financing carbon reduction projects in developing countries. Carbon offsets
originating from registered and approved CDM projects take the form of
Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs).
The carbon compnay analyst, Point Carbon, estimates that in 2005 buyers
contracted for 397 million tons (Mt) of CO2 e under the Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol (up from 14Mt in 2004). Assuming
payment on delivery and a 7 per cent discount rate, they estimated that this
market was worth €1.9 billion (about $2.38 billion). The other Kyoto
mechanism for flexibility was believed to have traded only 28Mt of carbon,
and was worth around €96 million ($120.5 million) (Point Carbon, 2006).
Beyond these direct Kyoto markets, countries have established (or are
establishing) national or regional emissions trading schemes to help them
meet their Kyoto targets. The largest of these schemes is the EU Emission
Trading Scheme (EU ETS), which the European Union launched in January
2005 to help achieve the greenhouse gas emission reductions required of the
region by the Kyoto Protocol. The EU ETS involves all of the EU’s member
states and allows limited trading with the three Kyoto mechanisms described
above through a linking directive. More specifically, EU members may trade
allowances (known as EUAs) with one another, or they may buy and sell
carbon credits – ERUs and CERs – generated by Joint Implementation (JI)
or Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects.
By the end of its first year of trading, the ETS had transacted an estimated
362 million tons (Mt) of carbon, worth approximately €7.2 billion- (or US$9
billion-) worth of carbon credits (Point Carbon, 2006; Capoor and Ambrosi,
2006). According to Point Carbon, this was up from 17Mt of forward trading
the year prior).

Figure 1.2 Growth in the global carbon market

Note: The Kyoto Protocol’s entry into force and the launch of the European Union’s
Emission Trading Scheme drove huge expansion in the global carbon market in 2005
(Lecocq and Capoor, 2005; Capoor and Ambrosi, 2006).
8 Voluntary Carbon Markets

Outside Europe, regulated emissions trading schemes related to the Kyoto

Protocol have not developed as quickly. Japan and Canada ratified the treaty,
and Japanese companies, in particular, have been active buyers of carbon
credits on the CDM market, but neither country has launched a regulated emis-
sions trading scheme of its own. The Japanese government has a government-
mediated voluntary market for carbon, and Canada was in the process of setting
up a scheme when there was a change of government. The current government
has since said it is not sure it will meet its Kyoto targets and has talked of
scrapping plans for emissions trading. The environment minister, however,
has given indications that the country may seek to link up with trading schemes
in the US.
The explosive growth of the global compliance carbon market under the
Kyoto Protocol has meant that prices for carbon credits have been extremely
volatile. Despite this volatility, the market now seems to be maturing, as regu-
lators and participants refine their approach to allocating and trading carbon
credits. A short paragraph from the World Bank’s ‘State and Trends of the
Carbon Market 2006’ report suggests the level of sophistication to which the
compliance carbon market quickly evolved:

Financial innovation thrived as a plethora of clever carbon-based securities

and hedge instruments became available to hedge carbon price risk against
price volatility in other commodity markets. Brokers, consultants, carbon
procurement funds, hedge fund managers and other buyers scoured the
globe for opportunities to buy credits associated with projects that reduce
emissions in developing countries. Innovative structures that managed both
downside and upside carbon price risk and reduced delivery risk began to
emerge, which aligned purchases of carbon with an interest in the underlying
project through equity, debt, mezzanine finance, technology or operating
agreements. The City of London developed as a sort of hub for many of these
activities and a vibrant new climate services industry developed (Capoor and
Ambrosi, 2006).

Echoing the World Bank’s analysis, Annie Petsonk, international counsel for
Environmental Defense’s Global and Regional Air Program says she is particu-
larly pleased with some of the innovations triggered by the CDM. Inspired by
the active market in Europe, Petsonk says people are now pouring money into
new clean technologies in the hopes of capitalizing on a perceived first-mover
advantage. Indeed, the European experience with carbon trading suggests
that large-scale environmental markets not only are feasible, but also are
capable of changing the way businesses relate to environmental issues
(Kenny 2006).

Movement in the US
While neither Australia nor the US (two of the largest per-capita emitters of
GHGs in the world) chose to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, state governments in
both countries have initiated their own regulatory processes, alone or in
conjunction with others.
 The Big Picture 9

In 1997 the US state of Oregon enacted the Oregon Standard, the first
regulation of CO2 in the US. The Oregon Standard requires that new power
plants built in Oregon reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to 17 per cent
below the most efficient combined cycle plant. Plants may achieve this target
by offsetting their emissions through proposed offset projects or by paying
mitigation funds to The Climate Trust, a non-profit organization created to
implement projects that avoid or sequester CO2 emissions. Since its creation,
The Climate Trust has offset more than 1.6 million metric tons of carbon
dioxide. The organization has a portfolio of over US$4 million invested in
greenhouse gas offset projects, and anticipates securing an additional US$4-
to-$6 million in project-based reduction in 2006 (www.climatetrust.org/).
On the East Coast of the US, eight states are developing the Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a regional strategy to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions utilizing a cap-and-trade system. The programme commits
participating states to cap their emissions at 1990 levels after 2009 and
then drop them by 10 per cent by 2018. RGGI will cover electric utilities
capable of producing at least 25 megawatts of power, giving power plants
three-year compliance periods to submit one CO2 allowance for every ton of
CO2 emitted.
The programme allows utilities to use offset projects that occur away from
the power plant itself to meet emissions targets, but only on a limited basis.
Initially, utilities may use offset projects – which include capturing landfill
methane, planting trees and energy efficiency programmes – to cover 3.3 per
cent of their emissions. If allowance prices rise beyond expected levels, then
RGGI will allow utilities to use more offsets (Biello, 2006).
Importantly, the RGGI memorandum of understanding highlights an
interest in expanding ‘the geographic reach of the Program.’ In thinking
about future expansion, RGGI’s architects are watching California especially
closely. While California does not have any trading scheme functioning yet,
the state commission charged with developing its GHG programme has
expressed an interest in cap-and-trade programmes and has called for links
with RGGI and the state passed landmark legislation in August 2006 in
the form of a bill called AB32. The bill requires a 25% cut in the state’s
carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, and insiders say that cap-and-trade will,
indeed, be one of the mechanisms used to reach the target. California also
has one of the most highly developed registries of carbon credits (the Cali-
fornia Climate Action Registry, or CCAR), a registry that might be
mimicked not only in the US Northeast, but also in the US Midwest. If
programmes on the East and West coasts link up, say carbon market experts,
a national trading programme in the US, will not be far behind (Anderson,
2006).

Australia’s Pioneers
While Europe’s compliance carbon market clearly leads the world in terms of
sophistication and scale, it is worth noting that the state of New South Wales
10 Voluntary Carbon Markets

(NSW) in Australia launched the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme

on January 1, 2003, two years before the first trade ever took place on the
EU ETS.
The NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme is a state-level programme
designed to reduce emissions from the energy sector through carbon trading.
Under the scheme, NSW energy producers may not emit any more than
their apportioned share of a statewide target. Legislators set the target at
8.65 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita in 2003, decreasing by
about 3 per cent each year thereafter through to 2007, when it will remain at
7.27 tons (Hanley, 2006).
Under the scheme, energy producers exceeding their allotment of emis-
sions can offset them either by surrendering NSW Greenhouse Abatement
Certificates (NGACs) purchased from other producers, or by paying an
$11/tonne fine. ‘Prices started at about A$6 when the scheme started, but
we’ve recently seen deals that settle early 2010 trade at A$17.10,’ says Ken
Edwards, a broker at Sydney-based Next Generation Energy Solutions
(Hanley, 2006). Prices, say observers, are trading above the fine because
operators can get tax benefits from buying GHG credits, but not from
paying the fines.
‘The spot price is trading lower than the fine, but the forward price is above
that, so the market is anticipating that the fine will go up,’ says Edwards. ‘I
think the government is orchestrating a steady-as-she-goes policy with the
market, looking for a target of about A$20/tonne.’ (Hanley, 2006).
Iemma’s vision for a national approach got a lift in August 2006, when
Australia’s nine states and territories proposed a National Emissions Trading
Scheme (NETS) aimed at putting Australia on a path to reduce emissions by
60% by 2050. The NETS Taskforce outlined a plan to introduce mandatory
emission limits for stationary energy generators based on either 2000 or 1997
levels. The proposed scheme would launch in 2010.
Unfortunately, the emission reductions driven by state and regional
schemes in Australia and the US are tiny compared to those mandated by the
Kyoto Protocol, and the emission reductions driven by the Kyoto Protocol
are tiny compared to those scientists deem necessary. Throw in other
non-market-based reduction strategies around the world and Mark Kenber,
head of policy strategy at The Climate Group in London, says, ‘The policies
that we see around the world are nowhere near what the science suggests we
need.’

Thin end of the wedge

Guy Brasseur, head of the Hamburg-based Max Planck Institute for Meteor-
ology, echoed Kenber’s comments when he told the European Parliament in
November of 2005, ‘Kyoto won’t be enough.’
‘Emissions,’ said Brasseur, ‘will need to fall by 80 or 90 per cent, rather than
five or 10 per cent, to have an effect on the models. In terms of a response,
Kyoto is only a start.’ (Kenny, 2006).
 The Big Picture 11

In the absence of a much larger global effort to reduce GHG emissions,

models suggest the amount of CO2 trapped in the atmosphere will double
within the next 50 years and quadruple by the turn of the century. According
to Professor Steve Pacala, head of Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation
Initiative, that would ‘bring out the monsters behind the door’ – melting the
Greenland ice cap, washing away coastal cities, spreading famine, and inter-
mixing hurricanes with prolonged droughts (Kenny, 2006).
While scientists cannot say how many gigatons of CO2 emitted into the
atmosphere will produce how many degrees of warming, they do agree that
roughly seven billion tons – seven gigatons – of CO2 emissions must be prevented
from entering the atmosphere during the next 50 years in order to stabilize the
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere at 500ppm. Pacala slices a metaphorical
emissions pie into seven wedges in order to demonstrate how the world might
achieve a seven-gigaton cut (Pacala and Socolow, 2004). With each slice repre-
senting one gigaton of carbon dioxide emissions, Western Europe’s emissions
comprise about one wedge of the pie. In other words, if the ETS meets its
current targets and then extends them for the next four decades, it would
remove one slice of the pie (Kenny, 2006).
The current carbon market, it seems, represents only the very thin end of
the wedge when it comes to combating climate change. Fortunately, however,
wedges sometimes work like levers. Recognizing the need for increased action,
some institutions and individuals have undertaken voluntary commitments to
minimize (or even neutralize) their contribution to climate change by offsetting
their emissions through investments in projects that either remove an equiva-
lent amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or prevent it from being
emitted in the first place.
Much like the credits traded in a regulated cap-and-trade scheme, volun-
tary offset projects generate credits equal to the removal or avoided emission
of one ton of carbon dioxide. Institutions voluntarily purchasing credits either
have set caps on themselves, such as 10 per cent reductions below 1990 levels,
or have decided to offset some or all of the emissions related to their activities.
Institutions claiming to have offset their greenhouse gas emissions must retire
credits purchased. As in a compliance market, carbon credits in a voluntary
market ideally allow actors to reduce emissions at least cost.

Voluntary carbon market

Voluntary carbon markets are nothing new; in fact, they pre-date all regulated
carbon markets. The world’s first carbon offset deal was brokered in 1989 (long
before the Kyoto Protocol was signed, let alone ratified), when AES Corp.,
an American electricity company, invested in an agro-forestry project in
Guatemala (Hawn, 2005).
Since trees use and store carbon as they grow (an example of carbon
sequestration), AES reasoned it could offset the GHGs it emitted during
electricity production by paying farmers in Guatemala to plant 50 million
12 Voluntary Carbon Markets

pine and eucalyptus trees on their land (Hawn, 2005). AES, like other compa-
nies since, hoped to reduce its ‘carbon footprint’ for philanthropic and
marketing reasons, not because it was forced to do so by legislation or global
treaty. The deal thus was voluntary, marking the beginning of a voluntary
carbon market that remains as controversial and interesting today as it was in
1989.
Unlike the regulated market, the voluntary market does not rely on legally
mandated reductions to generate demand. As a result, the market suffers from
fragmentation and a lack of widely available impartial information. The
fragmented and opaque nature of the voluntary market can, in large part, be
attributed to the fact that it is partially composed of deals that are negotiated
on a case-by-case basis, and that many of these deals neither require the
carbon credits to undergo a uniform certification or verification process nor
register them with any central body. As a result, there are many types of
carbon transactions on the voluntary market and a variety of businesses and
non-profits based on different models sell a range of products, certified to a
wide array of standards.
The lack of uniformity, transparency and registration in the voluntary
market has won it a great deal of criticism from some environmentalists who
claim that it is a game of smoke and mirrors rather than an engine of actual
environmental progress. Many buyers also say they are wary of the voluntary
carbon market since transactions often carry real risks of non-delivery. Some
companies buying carbon credits also fear that they will be criticized by
NGOs if the carbon they are buying isn’t seen to meet the highest possible
standards.
Of concern to environmentalists and buyers, alike, is the fact that the
voluntary carbon market’s lack of regulation may mean it cannot reach the
scale necessary to impact the problem. Because it lacks a regulatory driver,
demand for credits can be volatile and fickle. The sudden explosion of the
Kyoto carbon market in 2005 shows the difference that regulation can make.
Clearly, regulation is key to driving large-scale demand. ‘The voluntary
credit market could grow by an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude
and it’s still not going to impact the problem,’ explains Mark Trexler, president
of Trexler Climate & Energy Services (Trexler, 2006).
Despite the shortcomings of the voluntary market, many feel it is a fast-
evolving arena with some distinct and important advantages over the regulated
carbon market. While the wide range of products emerging from the voluntary
market can be confusing to potential buyers, these products can also be highly
innovative and flexible. Numerous suppliers say they benefit from this
flexibility and the lower transaction costs associated with it.
For example, the cost of getting a carbon offset project approved by the
CDM Executive Board under the Kyoto Protocol ranges anywhere from
US$50,000 to US$250,000 (Krolik, 2006). By the time the United Nations
CDM Executive Board finally registers a typical small-scale CDM project
(essentially creating the CER that can be sold on the CDM markets), the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) calculates that the project’s
 The Big Picture 13

total up-front costs will account for 14–22 per cent of the net present value of its
revenue from carbon credits (Krolik, 2006). For many projects, coming up with
the start-up capital to register a project for the compliance carbon market is
prohibitively difficult.
The voluntary carbon markets, on the other hand, don’t have these sorts of
transaction costs. They can avoid ‘bottlenecks’ in the CDM methodology
approval process and get carbon financing for methodologies that aren’t
currently ‘approved’ for sale by the CDM process. For example, the Nature
Conservancy is working towards obtaining carbon financing for forest protec-
tion projects (what in Kyoto parlance is referred to as ‘avoided deforestation’), a
concept not currently approved to produce carbon credits within the CDM
process.
The innovation, flexibility and lower transaction costs of the voluntary
carbon market can benefit buyers as well as suppliers. When an organization
purchases carbon offsets to meet a public relations or branding need, creativity,
speed, cost-effectiveness and the ability to support specific types of projects
(e.g. those that also benefit local communities or biodiversity) can often be
clear and valuable benefits.
Having weighed such pros and cons, many non-profit organizations are
supportive of the voluntary carbon market because it provides individuals –
not just corporations and large organizations – with a means of participating
in the fight against climate change in a way that the compliance markets do
not. And since individuals account for most of the GHG emissions currently
being put into the atmosphere (more than 50 per cent by some counts; Biello,
2006), some environmentalists view the voluntary carbon market as an impor-
tant tool for educating the public about climate change and their potential role
in addressing the problem.
Last but not least, some sellers and buyers of carbon credits prefer the
voluntary carbon market precisely because it does not depend on regulation.
As the international political community struggles to implement an effective
climate-change framework, the voluntary carbon market has the potential to
become an active driver of change today.

A more formal affair

Be they fans or critics, experts agree that the voluntary carbon market is in a
critical period right now. Spurred by the success of the regulated carbon
markets, the voluntary market is formalizing, as investors who cut their teeth
on the regulated market look for other places to put their money, and as
buyers and sellers consolidate around a few guiding practices and business
models from which conclusions can be drawn about market direction and
opportunities.
Although nobody has exact numbers on the size of the voluntary carbon
market, most think it has grown rapidly in the last two years. Kenber of
The Climate Group gives the following estimates of past and projected
market size:
14 Voluntary Carbon Markets

Table 1.1 Voluntary carbon market size

Year Estimated/projected market volume (million tons/yr)

2004 3–5Mt
2005 10–20Mt
2006 20–50Mt
2007 100Mt
Source: Kenber, 2006

While maturing quickly, the voluntary market remains relatively small.

Kenber’s outside estimate that 20Mt of carbon may have traded on the volun-
tary carbon market last year is probably optimistic. And to put this number in
perspective, 20Mt traded on the EU ETS in a single week in April 2006.
Despite the comparatively small scale of the voluntary carbon market, some
investors believe it is poised for explosive growth and some companies see
real business opportunities associated with the creation of carbon-neutral
products for retail consumption. If these predictions are to be borne out,
most market players think it will be necessary to formalize and streamline the
voluntary market, making it more accessible and gaining the confidence of
large institutional buyers in Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.
At present there are several related and unrelated efforts underway to make
the voluntary carbon market more ‘investor-friendly’ by creating registries,
documenting the size of the market, and standardizing the credits being sold.
For instance, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
(WBCSD) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) jointly issued the
Greenhouse Gas Protocol for Project Accounting (WBCSD/WRI GHG
Protocol) in December 2005. In March of 2006, the International Organisation
for Standardisation (ISO) followed up with the ISO 14064 standards for
greenhouse gas accounting and verification. According to an ISO press release,
these standards are intended to:
. promote consistency, transparency and credibility in GHG quantification,
monitoring, reporting and verification;
. enable organizations to identify and manage GHG-related liabilities, assets
and risks;
. facilitate the trade of GHG allowances or credits; and
. support the design, development and implementation of comparable and
consistent GHG schemes or programmes.

Several other, related initiatives include: the Voluntary Carbon Standard

(VCS), which is still in its formative stages, and the Gold Standard for
Voluntary Emission Reductions (GSV), which was released in May 2006.
The Bank of New York, meanwhile, has launched a global registrar and
custody service to facilitate trading of voluntary carbon credits following the
 The Big Picture 15

VCS. According to the bank, the new service will allow buyers and sellers
to transfer voluntary carbon credits in a centralized, secure and paperless
environment. ‘We expect our collective efforts will greatly assist in the
development of this important market,’ says Karen Peetz, senior executive
vice president and head of The Bank of New York’s Corporate Trust Division
(Bank of New York, 2006).
Whatever one’s take on the long term prospects of the voluntary carbon
market, it seems clear that, in the short term, the market is evolving quickly,
creating new economic and environmental opportunities for investors, busi-
nesses, non-profits and individuals. It is therefore important to understand
how this market operates. In the next chapter, then, we will turn our attention
to addressing a basic but all-important question: how does the voluntary carbon
market really work?

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