Calyx Global Newsletter: June 2024 Edition
Welcome to the June edition of the Calyx Global Newsletter! On this month's agenda: a recap of the latest development in 'beyond carbon' benefits, new project type ratings, and insights from carbon experts across our network. Learn about what we've been up to:
How carbon credit standards address safeguards
In a carbon project, safeguards play a crucial role in protecting local communities and ecosystems by minimizing social and environmental risks. We evaluated the leading carbon and sustainable development certification standards (such as the CCB, GS4GC, SD VISta, and VCS) on their coverage of the 10 safeguard areas and 55 sub-areas analyzed by Calyx Global. Our blog post highlights findings from the comparison, showing which safeguard areas are adequately covered by these standards, and where they may fall short.?
Additionality in carbon credits
Carbon credits are a widely used tool by companies to help meet their sustainability goals. But to ensure legitimate climate impact, carbon credits must meet specific quality criteria. Among these, additionality is considered to be the most critical. This blog post dives into the concept as it is applied in carbon markets and the nuances that carbon credit buyers can consider when assessing a project’s additionality.
A Library of Learnings: Cookstoves and biodigesters
To date, Calyx Global has rated over 100 cookstove and biodigester projects. We believe cookstove projects can offer good GHG integrity, as well make real SDG contributions. In this note, we gather resources for stakeholders interested in increasing their knowledge of these project types and our approach to assessing them.
An introduction to manure management carbon projects
This past month, Calyx Global rated our first large-scale manure project.? Manure management carbon projects occur on large-scale livestock farms (cattle, swine, buffalo, sheep, goats, and/or poultry) and help reduce emissions by capturing GHGs released from animal manure, preventing them from entering the atmosphere.? We offer a brief primer on how these projects work, the benefits of manure management, and common environmental and social risks of this project type.
500+ Calyx Ratings: What have we learned?
Calyx Global has rated over 500 carbon projects! When reaching milestones, we like to pause for a moment to reflect and share what we have learned. Our ratings currently cover over half of all credit issuances in the past several years. Each week we also update our credit ratings distribution. So what have we learned??
Carbon projects need more than GHG accounting
A recent publication from the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) highlights why forest carbon projects should measure a range of outcomes in carbon projects beyond greenhouse gas impact. In this blog post, we discuss why such metrics matter and how long-term sustainability of nature-based carbon projects cannot be effective without forest governance that prioritizes community participation, benefit-sharing and other SDGs.
State of the Carbon Markets Series
领英推荐
Our team released the remaining batch of our “State of the Carbon Market” video series, where we interview carbon market experts and discuss how they are reacting to the evolving industry.?Check out the following videos that we’re closing the series with:?
Upcoming Webinar
Surprises from analyzing 500+ carbon projects?| June 12th, 9AM BST
Join carbon market experts from Morgan Stanley, BCG and Calyx Global as they discuss insights gained from evaluating carbon credit quality. The speakers will review the surprising project types with higher GHG integrity, due diligence best practices, and how to consider beyond carbon impacts.
Upcoming Events
Harvard Climate Action Week | June 10th
Donna Lee will be a panelist for the session Voluntary Carbon Markets at this event. If you’ll be attending and would like to meet,?let us know.
Carbon Forward North America | June 11-12th?
Donna Lee will be a guest speaker at this event, joining a panel discussion on The quest for quality: A wish list for the voluntary carbon market. If you’ll be at this event and would like to meet, let us know.
S&P Global Carbon Management Americas Conference | June 25-27th
Duncan van Bergen will be a speaker at the S&P Global Carbon Management Conference in Denver, CO. Reach out to schedule a meeting with our team.
Closing thoughts?
"Last week, the US Government (USG), signaled strong support for the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM). The announcement is not too surprising. The US has always been more carbon market-friendly than our European friends across the Atlantic. This is, in part, because the USG’s ability to pull policy levers for climate change is more limited, given the political polarization that paralyzes the US Congress.?
Also, the VCM can support a number of the current administration’s policy objectives. One is the continuation of initiatives supported by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, or the climate bill by another, more politically palatable name). This includes spending by the Department of Energy to kick start a durable CDR (carbon dioxide removal) market: Someone needs to buy the tons they are spurring on. Or the funds allocated by the Growing Climate Solution Act for the US Department of Agriculture to develop carbon methodologies for forest & land projects – which, in turn, drives money from Wall Street and Silicon Valley to rural America, i.e., landowners and farmers who otherwise would not find common ground on climate change. There is also John Kerry’s Energy Transition Accelerator, and the State Department’s support of jurisdictional REDD through the LEAF coalition – all in need of buyers of carbon credits.?
So the broad strokes of the statement are not too surprising. However, one surprising tidbit was the support for using carbon credits to offset Scope 3 emissions. There was also a strong statement on transparency, i.e., “disclosure of purchased, canceled or retired credits should be made on at least an annual basis and include details that enable outside observers and relevant stakeholders to assess whether purchased and retired credits are of high integrity and avoid negative environmental and social impacts.”?
At Calyx Global, we stand ready to help companies find high integrity credits – ones that avoid negative impacts – and report on use of them with confidence."
- Donna Lee
Calyx Global Co-founder