Carbon Offsets and Climate Change Mitigation
- Description
- Curriculum
- FAQ
- Reviews
Carbon offsets have been a popular climate change mitigation option for individuals and companies alike, but they have also been very contentious. This course provides you with an in-depth understanding of what kind of commodity carbon offsets are, how they have evolved, the biggest challenges offsets have encountered when it comes to delivering climate change mitigation, and where offset markets might be headed next. It answers several key questions:
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What defines a carbon offset?
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How long is long enough to demonstrate the permanence of carbon offsets?
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How much leakage is too much when it comes to getting qualified as a carbon offset?
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Why is additionality so important to the environmental integrity of carbon offsets?
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Why is additionality so hard to get right, even with best efforts?
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What’s the single most important thing that would improve the integrity of offset markets?
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What’s the role of nature-based solutions in carbon offsets?
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Where are carbon offset markets headed?
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How can you dig deeper into carbon offsets on your own?
If you’re new to carbon offsets and carbon markets, or are considering purchasing or investing in carbon offsets, take advantage of this course to leverage thousands of hours of carbon offsets experience. Your instructor worked on the first carbon offset project 35 years ago, and many other offset projects since then. He is widely published on carbon offset topics including additionality and the environmental integrity of carbon offsets, and has spent thousands of hours curating carbon offsets information and knowledge in the Climate Web, a comprehensive climate change knowledge management solution developed over the last 10 years.
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1
IntroductionThis short lecture will introduce the scope of this course when it comes to understanding and exploring carbon offsets as a tool for mitigating climate change.
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2
Background to Carbon Offsets
This lesson goes back to the first carbon offset project in 1988, and provides a review of how carbon offsets became so popular so quickly.
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3
Defining a Carbon Offset
We'll introduce the definition of carbon offsets, and differentiate between the criteria key to offsets' environmental integrity, and those that aren't. The course focuses on the former, but the latter group is important to understand.
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4
Offset Permanence
Why is offset permanence a core criterion for carbon offsets, and how is permanence being defined?
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5
Offset Leakage
Why is "no leakage" a core criterion for carbon offsets, and how is leakage defined and quantified?
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6
Offset Additionality - Introduction
The first of three lessons focused on the key offset topic of additionality, this lesson introduces the additionality and its definition.
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7
Additionality - Why So Critical to Environmental Integrity?
Most people don't recognize just how important additionality is to the environmental integrity of carbon offsets and carbon markets. This lesson explores why additionality is, for all practical purposes, indispensable.
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8
Why Additionality is So Hard to Get Right
Even if you understand the importance of additionality, you may not grasp why it's so hard to actually get additionality right. This lesson analogizes to the criminal justice system to help explain the challenge.
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9
Given the Challenges, What's Reasonable to Expect for Environmental Integrity?
There is no way to ever have a perfect offset pool in which all tons are reliably additional, permanent, and not subject to leakage, so what can we expect?
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10
Carbon Offset Critiques
Carbon offsets have been criticized on a wide variety of grounds, and we'll quickly explore what those grounds have been.
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11
What's Been the Real Problem for Offsets?
You'll hear a lot of discussion of what the main problems facing offsets has been, including fraud and double-counting, but a lot of that discussion is misleading.
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12
What Does the Literature Say About How We've Done?
We don't ask "how have we done with offsets" nearly enough, but there is some literature that has tried to answer the question. We'll explore some of those studies and their conclusions.
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13
From Round 1 to Round 2
Many observers thought voluntary offset markets would fade away, and they started to, until the idea of "net zero" gained traction starting around 2015. It's transformed the course of offset markets and expectations.
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14
Nature Based Solutions in Round 2
Nature-based solutions are all the rage today, but how will they perform in the face of climate change?
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15
Is it Time to Score Carbon Offsets?
The first carbon offset scoring system was developed more than a decade ago, but it never caught on. That might be changing, and that's a good thing.
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16
So You Want to Buy Carbon Offsets?
If you want to buy carbon offsets, we can't tell you which ones to buy. But we can suggest how to do your own due diligence.
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17
So You're Considering Investing in Carbon Offsetss?
If you're considering investing in carbon offsets, you really want to understand the history and challenges of offsets, and you should do some serious due diligence.
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18
Potential Alternatives to Offsets
Several alternatives exist to carbon offsets, and they might be better for climate change mitigation, but will buyers purchase them?
