Glasgow Climate Conference

The agreement reached at the climate conference in Glasgow in November 2021 sought to reduce the problem of double counting of delivered emission reductions in voluntary offset transactions. It had arisen in January 2021 when the resolutions of the Paris climate summit came into force. Almost all countries in the world had made a binding commitment to reduce their emissions in Paris. If a project is now carried out abroad to offset European emissions, the host country could scale back its own climate protection efforts to the same extent. The contribution of a climate protection project would then no longer be additional and compensation of own emissions could no longer be promised.

In Glasgow, an attempt was made to eliminate this problem by introducing corresponding adjustments. This means that the approving country can no longer count emission reductions towards its own reduction target, allowing others to claim emission reductions for themselves without double counting. Unfortunately, this approach was only implemented with CORSIA for aviation; it does not necessarily apply to the voluntary carbon market as well. As before, carbon credits may be issued here without Corresponding Adjustments, i.e., without offsetting host countries. The problem of double counting of emission reductions described above therefore remains. Several countries, most notably Switzerland, tried to stop this by a general ban on offsetting own emissions with unauthorized credits, as observers report. Unfortunately, however, no agreement could be reached here. The problem that arose after the Paris Agreement came into force, that because of the double counting of emission reductions in the Voluntary Carbon Market, carbon credits can actually only confirm the financing of climate protection measures, but not a resulting (net) effect on emissions, was thus locked in for the future.

Some countries, such as Brazil and India, also successfully lobbied in Glasgow to allow Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) from projects registered after 2013 to continue to be used to achieve national reduction targets. Using old CERs to achieve NDCs directly undermines climate targets, as these emission reductions have already been achieved in the past or will yield further reductions anyway based on past decisions.

 

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