US unveils carbon market guardrails’ to increase trust

Move to ensure these markets effectively reduce CO2 emissions is boost to sector

US President Joe Biden's administration announced new "guardrails" on May 28 to help ensure carbon offset markets are actually effective, in a big boost for the controversy-dogged schemes intended to reduce planet-warming emissions.

Cabinet officials including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen laid out the government's first broad guidelines for "high-integrity" carbon markets, aimed at dispelling distrust in a system panned by critics as greenwashing but praised by some investors and officials as a key way to help save nature and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's about building the confidence to be able to use this tool more effectively at scale," White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi told AFP.

"Four years into the decisive decade for climate action, we're not in a position to sideline any set of tools that will help us move faster." Carbon credits enable corporations and countries to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, with each credit representing the reduction or removal of one tonne of carbon dioxide CO2, often in developing countries through projects combating deforestation.

Other examples of carbon projects include replacing polluting cookstoves, and directly capturing CO2 from the air.