Carbon Offsets and Its Effect on Climate

Over the last five decades, an increasing wealth of long-term environment, atmosphere, and ocean observations have provided insightful data into how climate change affects the ways that carbon dioxide moves through Earth’s ecosystem. Yet, a lot of primary questions remain unanswered. In fact, the most complex and societally appropriate inquiry is whether the rate at which the land and ocean can remove carbon will continue to keep pace with the increasing greenhouse emissions.

Carbon dioxide and methane emissions resulting from human activities are changing the climate at an unprecedented rate. Earth’s climate is becoming warmer, resulting in disastrous and long-lasting fire seasons. Moreover, it also modifies precipitation patterns, leading to flooding in low-lying areas and drought in others. It is also causing ocean acidification that is ultimately threatening marine life across the world.

?In any case, land and ocean ecosystems behave like natural buffers that curb the extent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by absorbing and removing almost half of the emitted carbon dioxide. So even though the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere continue to increase, this climate change alleviation has kept pace with these emissions, reducing global warming to a certain extent.

?On the other hand, a range of companies, cities, countries, celebrities, and companies have all vowed to reduce their activities that contribute to climate change, if not curb them altogether. Amazon, Nestle, Delta Airlines, NASCAR, JetBlue, Dave Matthews Band, Texas, and Justin Trudeau are some names that have proposed their commitments to curb climate change.

?And they have one measure in common:?purchasing carbon offsets.

?For organizations like Amazon and Delta Airlines pursuing their “net-zero emissions” goals, carbon offsets help their plans provide the “net.” These companies are under immense pressure to eliminate their carbon emissions and move to sustainability. And together, these purchasers are propelling a multibillion-dollar market for one of the most famous (and more infamous) measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions.?

Unilever, IBM, and Microsoft are some other big organizations that have set ambitious goals to achieve carbon neutrality over the next two to three decades. However, in some cases, eliminating carbon emissions can be costly. In other cases, it is almost impossible. When a corporation is on a mission to reduce emissions but cannot do so, it can buy a carbon credit to offset its operations’ emissions into the atmosphere.

?The United Arab Emirates government has launched a strategic initiative targeting carbon neutrality by 2050.

?The UAE will invest over $163 billion in renewable energy as part of the commitment to the carbon neutrality initiative hoping to engage the world in a conversation to create a positive impact on the environment. ?

Carbon neutrality, defined as achieving the balance between carbon emissions and carbon absorption from the atmosphere, is a high priority agenda item on UN’s 26th Climate Change Conference.??

?The conference starts on October 31 and involves 26 #OneStepGreener Ambassadors and more than 190 global leaders who will meet up to discuss urgent action to tackle climate change.?

?What is a Carbon Credit?

?A carbon credit is created as a result of projects that help mitigate, eliminate, or prevent greenhouse emissions. These carbon credits are validated by individual standards developed by NGOs and other carbon market participants.

Carbon credits could be considered certificates representing the qualities of greenhouse gases sequestered or eliminated from the atmosphere. While these credits have been in the headlines for decades now, the voluntary market for carbon credits has developed considerably over the last few years. When a carbon credit is claimed, it is removed from the registry or retired, and the exact credit cannot be resold.

The voluntary market for carbon credits is different from the primary ones, where officials set carbon emission targets and allow organizations to trade the surplus. When carbon credits are appropriately achieved, they can produce revenue streams for conservation project developers working in fields such as reforestation.

These needs and demands for carbon offsets create an opportunity for technology to develop platforms oriented towards the needs of purchasers and sellers as a carbon offsets marketplace and a carbon exchange. The exchange will promote the sale of high-quality carbon credits in massive amounts, primarily to multinational organizations and institutional investors. At the same time, the marketplace, on the other hand, will enable the purchase of high-quality carbon credits directly from particular projects.

The marketplace will allow various entities to participate in the voluntary carbon credits market by backing solutions to protect, conserve, and restore natural environments- to help them meet their sustainability goals.

The technology solution could leverage blockchain, satellite monitoring, and machine learning to facilitate the integrity, quality, and transparency of the high-quality carbon credits.

Get Involved

If you still think climate change isn’t essential and there’s no need to do anything or change our lifestyle to mitigate it, you’re missing something. And it will be one of the most important things to have missed in your entire life.

So, what can you do to help? You can get involved straight away in the #GreenerTogether project to create a better sense of community and work together to be kinder to the environment. Working together on this project will improve the quality of our lives as humans and as a community.?

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