Aviation’s Credibility on Environmental Integrity

Carbon Market Watch recommends that the ICAO GMBM exclude high-risk offset projects, including fossil fuel power plants, nuclear facilities, large-scale hydropower, and certain industrial gas destruction projects. The brief highlights that these project types often lack additionality, cause severe social and environmental harm, or suffer from non-permanence. It cites existing exclusions in the EU ETS and other jurisdictions as precedents for maintaining high quality standards in aviation's climate response.

• The ICAO GMBM should implement a minimum list of ineligible project types to ensure environmental integrity, including fossil fuel power plants, nuclear facilities, hydroelectric projects exceeding 20MW, most LULUCF projects (except peat land rewetting), HFC-23 and N2O from adipic acid destruction, geological CO2 capture and sequestration, and projects without sustainable development co-benefits.
• Large-scale power projects, including fossil, nuclear, and large hydro, are considered highly unlikely to be additional, meaning they may not represent real emission reductions and could potentially increase global greenhouse gas emissions by over a gigatonne of CO2e through 2020 if they are non-additional.
• Fossil fuel power projects are criticized for diverting investment from green energy and causing severe health and environmental impacts, such as mercury emissions from coal combustion and methane leaks during extraction.
• Large hydroelectric dams are identified as high-risk due to methane emissions in tropical regions, vulnerability to climate-driven droughts and flooding, and frequent human rights violations involving indigenous peoples.
• Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) projects are generally unsuitable for the GMBM because they cannot deliver permanent emissions reductions and are subject to 'leakage' and reversibility.
• Industrial gas destruction projects, specifically HFC-23 and N2O from adipic acid, create perverse incentives to increase production of the parent chemicals to generate more credits, undermining the Montreal Protocol and climate goals.
• Carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects are viewed as subsidies for the oil industry, particularly Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) projects, which extend the life of oil fields without reducing overall emissions and carry risks of CO2 seepage.
• The GMBM should adopt a mandatory Sustainable Development Tool, similar to the CDM's 2014 tool, to monitor co-benefits and provide safeguards against human rights abuses and environmental harm.

APA

Carbon Market Watch (2015). Aviation’s Credibility on Environmental Integrity. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/NC-Aviation-Credibility-on-Enviromental-credibility-infographic-WEB.pdf

Chicago

Carbon Market Watch. Aviation’s Credibility on Environmental Integrity. 2015. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/NC-Aviation-Credibility-on-Enviromental-credibility-infographic-WEB.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Carbon Market Watch |title=Aviation’s Credibility on Environmental Integrity |date=October 2015 |url=https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/NC-Aviation-Credibility-on-Enviromental-credibility-infographic-WEB.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{carbonmarketwatch2015aviations, author = {{Carbon Market Watch}}, title = {{Aviation’s Credibility on Environmental Integrity}}, institution = {Carbon Market Watch}, year = {2015}, month = oct, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/NC-Aviation-Credibility-on-Enviromental-credibility-infographic-WEB.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }