🌐 What role should carbon dioxide removal (#CDR) play in the #ParisAgreement? 🌐

The UNFCCC's Article 6.4 mechanism is a key tool for international carbon accounting: it allows a company in one country that reduces emissions to have those reductions credited so that it can sell them to another company in another country. This second company can then use them for complying with its own emission reduction obligations.

From 16 March to 11 April, the UNFCCC’s Article 6.4 mechanism Supervisory Body sought public input on the requirements for the development and assessment of mechanism methodologies.

Here are some of the organizations who submitted statements worth reading and further down my key takeaways:

Puro.earth: https://lnkd.in/dAX9uyS9

International Emissions Trading Association: https://lnkd.in/dMFeUNWH

Microsoft: https://lnkd.in/dRUvN7wm

The World Bank: https://lnkd.in/dqVR_aGr

44.01: https://lnkd.in/d-jSMiPz

Key themes worth highlighting:

✅ Emphasizing the inclusion of durable CDR

The Article 6.4 market mechanism should mention durable, industrial CDR implementations and ensure differentiation between avoided, reduced or removed emissions in the carbon credits produced.

📝Creating a positive list for automatic additionality

Developing a positive list – a list of technologies identified as environmentally sound and sustainable for mitigating climate change – is important for automatic additionality to make carbon crediting robust and efficient, with a focus on market penetration of new technologies.

🤝 Better supporting buyer-seller matches

Ensuring alignment and mitigation benefits enable buyer-seller matches and encourage parties to use existing flexibility under Article 6.4. Flexibility in activity selection and Nationally Determined Contributions (#NDCs) aligned baselines can also better enable matches.

🖍 Setting clear standards for design and development

Baseline setting, additionality, leakage, non-permanence and reversals must be considered to focus on #MRV, ensuring that credited reductions are real, quantifiable, verifiable, enforceable, permanent, and additional.

🔱 A three-prong approach to reductions

The use of a three-prong approach of: 1) incentives, 2) regulations, and 3) carbon pricing can help ensure the avoidance and reduction of emissions.

Beyond these takeaways, what stood out to me was how few organisations are actively getting involved with this process (17 globally…). Article 6.4 will play a huge role in the future of carbon accounting. While progress has been slow to date, it is likely to pick up pace and is worth more attention by the CDR industry.

Did you or your organization submit a statement not mentioned here? What would you add? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Also, special thanks to Helen Bray for putting this on my radar. See the full list of submissions here: https://lnkd.in/dCH-6Hmz