The world carbon market is growing at a staggering rate with trading volumes into the tens of billions of dollars and approaching a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. The growth prospects for business are enormous and the potential positive impacts for greenhouse gas emission reductions, climate policy options, renewable energy investment, development projects and efficiency gains are increasingly apparent.A key part of the market in greenhouse gas emissions is the rapidly growing voluntary carbon market driven by companies, organizations and individuals committed to efficiency, profitability and rapid action on climate change. HSBC, Volvo, Avis, Ricoh and American Express are but a few of the many companies now offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions and becoming 'carbon neutral', fuelling an international voluntary carbon market that is growing exponentially. This groundbreaking business book, written in a fast-paced journalistic style, draws together all the key information on international voluntary carbon markets with commentary from leading practitioners and business people. The voluntary market is complex, fragmented and multi-layered, but it is beginning to consolidate around a few guiding practices and business models from which conclusions can be drawn about market direction and opportunities.The book covers all aspects of voluntary carbon markets around the world: what they are, how they work and, most critically, their business potential to help slow climate change. It is the indispensable guide for anyone seeking to understand voluntary carbon markets and capitalize on the opportunities they present for economic and environmental benefit. If you want to be ahead of the curve for the next big thing, you need this book.

Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of 2010 award. This book is a comprehensive and accessible guide to understanding the opportunities offered by regulated and voluntary carbon markets for tackling climate change. Coverage includes: - An overview of the problem of climate change, with a concise review of the most recent scientific evidence in different fields - A highly accessible introduction to the economic theory and different constitutive elements of a carbon allowances market - Explanation of the Kyoto Protocol and its flexibility mechanisms - Explanation of how the EU Emissions Trading Scheme works in practice - Ongoing developments in regulated carbon markets in the US - Up-to-the-minute coverage of regulated carbon markets in Australia - Developments in New Zealand and Japan - Carbon offsetting and voluntary carbon markets. Combining theoretical aspects with practical applications, this book is for business leaders, financiers, carbon traders, lawyers, bankers, researchers, policy makers and anyone interested in market mechanisms to mitigate climate change. The carbon emissions resulting from the production of this book have been calculated, reduced and offset to render the bookcarbon neutral. Published with CO2 Neutral

Greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets have long been promoted as an important element of a comprehensive climate policy approach. Offset programs can reduce the overall cost of achieving a given emission goal by enabling emission reductions to occur where costs are lower. Offsets have the potential to deliver sustainability co-benefits, through technology development and transfer. They can also develop human and institutional capacity for reducing emissions in sectors and locations not included in a cap and trade or a mandatory government policy. However, offsets can pose a risk to the environmental integrity of climate actions, especially if issues surrounding additionality, permanence, leakage, quantification and verification are not adequately addressed. The challenge is to design offset programs and policies that can maximize their potential benefits while minimizing their potential risks. This handbook provides a systematic and comprehensive review of existing offset programs. It looks at what offsets are, how offset mechanisms function, and the successes and pitfalls they have encountered. Coverage includes offset programs across the full swath of applications including mandatory and voluntary systems, government regulated and private markets, carbon offset funds, and accounting and reporting protocols such as the WBCSD/WRI GHG Protocol and ISO 14064. Learning from the successes and failures of these programs will be essential to crafting effective climate policy. This is an essential reference for all regulators, policy makers, business leaders and NGOs concerned with the design and operation of GHG offset programs world-wide. Published with SEI

The promise of harnessing market forces to combat climate change has been unsettled by low carbon prices, financial losses, and ongoing controversies in global carbon markets. And yet governments around the world remain committed to market-based solutions to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. This book discusses what went wrong with the marketisation of climate change and what this means for the future of action on climate change. The book explores the co-production of capitalism and climate change by developing new understandings of relationships between the appropriation, commodification and capitalisation of nature. The book reveals contradictions in carbon markets for addressing climate change as a socio-ecological, economic and political crisis, and points towards more targeted and democratic policies to combat climate change. This book will appeal to students, researchers, policy makers and campaigners who are interested in climate change and climate policy, and the political economy of capitalism and the environment.

Setting up a social and environmentally sustainable business is hard work. Most entrepreneurs struggle to raise investment capital and make a small profit. Carbon credits can be a welcome source of additional revenue for those businesses and projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But where do you start? Practical information that is easy to apply to your specific situation is hard to find. The information you can find is often either too general, or full of complicated terminology. Hiring an expert is risky without an indication of whether you will be able to earn the money back. As a result many entrepreneurs are discouraged and never properly explore the possibilities of carbon credits, or get stuck somewhere in the process. This book is a beginner s guide for entrepreneurs who want to assess whether they can generate additional revenue with carbon credits. It provides a concise overview of the basics of carbon credits with a minimum of jargon, and illustrated with practical examples from real cases. Topics include: What are carbon credits? What are the basic requirements for a business or project to produce carbon credits? Where and how are they sold? What are the current prices and what influences these? Who are the different players in the industry, and what do they do? What are the different steps in the development of a carbon offset project? How do I choose a certification standard? How can I estimate the amount of carbon credits and revenue I can generate? This book addresses these questions in a way that is relevant to a wide variety of project types. Particular attention is given to the challenges of smaller projects in developing countries as well as forestry, agroforestry and biofuel projects."

"Drained peatlands account for only 0.3% of the global land area. At the same time, drained peatlands are the source of a disproportional 6% of total anthropogenic CO2-emissions; a problem that needs to be addressed. The 'hotspots' are well known: Southeast Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, parts of the United States and Northeast China. The solution is obvious: Restore high water levels in peatlands. But many questions remain. How does rewetting affect greenhouse gas fluxes? What about methane? Are the emissions measurable, reportable and verifiable? Are emission reductions from peatland rewetting creditable towards Kyoto Protocol commitments? Can they be sold on the voluntary carbon market? How does rewetting influence biodiversity? And, may rewetted peatlands still be used productively? Belarus ranks 8th among the world's countries in terms of peatland CO2 emissions and occupies 3rd place in CO2-emissions per unit land area. In recent years, tens of thousands of hectares of drained peatlands in Belarus have been rewetted. This volume provides a synthesis of the challenges encountered and solutions adopted in a pilot project conducted in Belarus between 2008 and 2011. It presents data and conclusions from the project and relates basic principles to advanced applications, integrating science and politics, ecology and economy. The experiences and recommendations for peatland restoration set forth in this volume will inspire practitioners, land-use planners, scientists and politicians alike."--Publisher's description.