Beyond Pure Offsetting: Assessing Options to Generate Net Mitigation Effects

The research evaluates four options for carbon market mechanisms to ensure they produce net emission reductions in host countries rather than merely offsetting emissions. The study identifies the application of discounts on avoided emissions and standardisation below business as usual as the most promising approaches, suggesting these be applied differentially based on project internal rates of return to balance cost-efficiency and attractiveness.

• Existing project-based carbon market mechanisms, specifically the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI), fail to directly impact global greenhouse gas emission levels or contribute to the national reduction targets of host countries because they function only to replace or offset emissions.
• Among four generic options analyzed to generate net emission reductions, the application of discounts on the volume of avoided emissions used for issuing carbon credits and the use of standardisation below business as usual were found to be the most promising, outperforming over-conservativeness and the limiting of crediting periods.
• To maintain project attractiveness and cost-efficiency, the researchers propose that these mitigation options be applied differentially across project types based on their internal rate of return.

APA

NewClimate Institute (2014). Beyond Pure Offsetting: Assessing Options to Generate Net Mitigation Effects. http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/beyond-pure-offsetting-assessing-options-to-generate-net-mitigation-effects

Chicago

NewClimate Institute. Beyond Pure Offsetting: Assessing Options to Generate Net Mitigation Effects. 2014. http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/beyond-pure-offsetting-assessing-options-to-generate-net-mitigation-effects.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=NewClimate Institute |title=Beyond Pure Offsetting: Assessing Options to Generate Net Mitigation Effects |date=22 May 2014 |url=http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/beyond-pure-offsetting-assessing-options-to-generate-net-mitigation-effects |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{newclimateinstitute2014beyond, author = {{NewClimate Institute}}, title = {{Beyond Pure Offsetting: Assessing Options to Generate Net Mitigation Effects}}, institution = {NewClimate Institute}, year = {2014}, month = may, url = {http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/beyond-pure-offsetting-assessing-options-to-generate-net-mitigation-effects}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }