It is time carbon markets got professional, Bezos Earth Fund CEO says
By Isla Binnie
NEW YORK, Oct 7 (Reuters) -It is time to get professional and give governments a role regulating voluntary carbon markets and corporate climate targets, the chief executive of the grant-giving Bezos Earth Fund told the Reuters Impact conference on Monday.
Trading in voluntary carbon credits, a relatively new and unregulated instrument generated by projects that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which companies can then buy to off-set their own environmental footprints, has shrunk as studies found some of those projects were not effective.
Companies, investors and activists are debating whether those credits should count towards "net-zero" targets which proliferated after the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Andrew Steer, head of the $10 billion Earth Fund set up with the personal fortune of Amazon AMZN.O founder Jeff Bezos to invest in tackling climate change this decade, told the conference there was not much time left to make those markets more efficient.
Steer listed a number of "self-appointed" voluntary groups which had contributed in the past 15 years to corporate climate efforts. These included emissions reporting platform CDP, and the World Resources Institute research organization, which he personally headed for several years and said he was proud to have been part of.
"It's time for moving on, I was going to say to the adults coming into the room, that's not fair because the NGOs are pretty good too. It's now time to get truly professional and regulated in the best sense," Steer said.
The Earth fund was an early backer of the Science-Based Targets initiative, a non-profit group now used by over 6,000 companies to audit their climate targets. SBTi said this year that offsets were largely ineffective, but delayed until 2025 a final decision on whether to approve companies' using them.
Biden administration officials wrote rules on carbon credits earlier this year, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission set guidelines for trading derivative contracts last month.
Steer also mentioned new laws in California which will oblige companies to account for emissions starting in 2026.
Reporting by Isla Binnie
Editing by Chris Reese
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Penafian: Entiti XM Group menyediakan perkhidmatan pelaksanaan sahaja dan akses ke Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian, yang membolehkan sesorang melihat dan/atau menggunakan kandungan yang ada di dalam atau melalui laman web, tidak bertujuan untuk mengubah atau memperluas, juga tidak mengubah atau mengembangkannya. Akses dan penggunaan tersebut tertakluk kepada: (i) Terma dan Syarat; (ii) Amaran Risiko; dan Penafian Penuh. Oleh itu, kandungan sedemikian disediakan tidak lebih dari sekadar maklumat umum. Terutamanya, perlu diketahui bahawa kandungan Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian bukan permintaan, atau tawaran untuk melakukan transaksi dalam pasaran kewangan. Berdagang dalam mana-mana pasaran kewangan melibatkan tahap risiko yang besar terhadap modal anda.
Semua bahan yang diterbitkan di Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian kami bertujuan hanya untuk tujuan pendidikan/maklumat dan tidak mengandungi – dan tidak boleh dianggap mengandungi nasihat kewangan, cukai pelaburan atau dagangan dan cadangan, atau rekod harga dagangan kami, atau tawaran, atau permintaan untuk suatu transaksi dalam sebarang instrumen kewangan atau promosi kewangan yang tidak diminta kepada anda.
Sebarang kandungan pihak ketiga serta kandungan yang disediakan oleh XM, seperti pendapat, berita, penyelidikan, analisis, harga, maklumat lain atau pautan ke laman web pihak ketiga yang terdapat dalam laman web ini disediakan berdasarkan "seadanya" sebagai ulasan pasaran umum dan bukanlah nasihat pelaburan. Sesuai dengan apa-apa kandungan yang ditafsir sebagai penyelidikan pelaburan, anda mestilah ambil perhatian dan menerima bahawa kandungan tersebut tidak bertujuan dan tidak sediakan berdasarkan keperluan undang-undang yang direka untuk mempromosikan penyelidikan pelaburan bebas dan oleh itu, ia dianggap sebagai komunikasi pemasaran di bawah peraturan dan undang-undang yang berkaitan. SIla pastikan bahawa anda telah membaca dan memahami Notifikasi mengenai Penyelidikan Pelaburan Bukan Bebas dan Amaran Risiko mengenai maklumat di atas yang boleh diakses di sini.
