气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): Managing uncertainty in carbon offsets: insights from California’s standardized approach

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DOI	10.1080/14693062.2020.1781035
	Managing uncertainty in carbon offsets: insights from California’s standardized approach
	Haya B.; Cullenward D.; Strong A.L.; Grubert E.; Heilmayr R.; Sivas D.A.; Wara M.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	14693062
起始页码	1112
结束页码	1126
卷号	20 期号:9
英文摘要	Carbon offsets allow greenhouse gas emitters to comply with an emissions cap by paying others outside of the capped sectors to reduce emissions. The first major carbon offset programme, the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), has been criticized for generating a large number of credits from projects that do not actually reduce emissions. Following the controversial CDM experience, California pioneered a second-generation compliance offset programme that shifts the focus of quality control from assessments of individual projects to the development of offset protocols, which define project type-specific eligibility criteria and methods for estimating emissions reductions. We assess the ability of California’s ‘standardized approach’ to mitigate the risk of over-crediting greenhouse gas reductions by reviewing the development of two California offset protocols–Mine Methane Capture and Rice Cultivation. We examine the regulator’s treatment of three sources of over-crediting under the CDM: non-additional projects, inflated counterfactual baseline scenarios, and perverse incentives that inadvertently increase emissions. We find that the standardized approach offers the ability to reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of over-crediting. This requires careful protocol-scale analysis, conservative methods for estimating reductions, ongoing monitoring of programme outcomes, and restricting participation to project types with manageable levels of uncertainty in emission reductions. However, several of these elements are missing from California’s regime, and even best practices result in significant uncertainty in true emission reductions. Relying on carbon offsets to lower compliance costs risks lessening total emission reductions and increases uncertainty in whether an emissions target has been met. Key policy insights Substantial and ongoing oversight by offset programme administrators is needed to contain uncertainty and avoid over-crediting. California’s Mine Methane Capture Protocol may have influenced federal decisions not to regulate methane emissions from coal mines on federally-owned lands. Government priorities and methodological choices drive outcomes in carbon pricing policies with large offset programmes, contrary to the common perception that these policies delegate decision-making to private actors. Offsets are better understood as a way for regulated emitters to invest in an incentive programme that achieves difficult-to-estimate emission reductions, than as accurately quantified tons of reductions. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
英文关键词	additionality; cap-and-trade; emissions trading; mine methane; Offsets; uncertainty
语种	英语
scopus关键词	carbon emission; clean development mechanism; emission control; emissions trading; methane; uncertainty analysis; United Nations; California; United States
来源期刊	Climate Policy
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/153244
作者单位	Center for Environmental Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, United States; California Institute for Energy and Environment, University of California, Berkeley, United States; Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA, United States; Environmental Studies Program, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, United States; Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States; Environmental Studies Program and Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States; Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Haya B.,Cullenward D.,Strong A.L.,等. Managing uncertainty in carbon offsets: insights from California’s standardized approach[J],2020,20(9).
APA	Haya B..,Cullenward D..,Strong A.L..,Grubert E..,Heilmayr R..,...&Wara M..(2020).Managing uncertainty in carbon offsets: insights from California’s standardized approach.Climate Policy,20(9).
MLA	Haya B.,et al."Managing uncertainty in carbon offsets: insights from California’s standardized approach".Climate Policy 20.9(2020).