Food giants Nestlé and Unilever stand accused of greenwashing over their climate commitments, for instance.
They believe there’s simply no time for offsets – trees can take 20 years to grow, after all, while the emissions are occurring today.
In the fourth quarter of this year it officially reached a value of US$1 billion amid increased interest from both voluntary buyers and, increasingly, traders.
Larsen said that the focus of CIX was to provide more education and feedback to companies using voluntary credits about the initiatives taking place on the ground delivering real impact in order to bring more trust and stability into this market.
“Many of those companies believe that it’s really important to manage down your emissions from your operations and your products and your supply chains,” he said.
Thanks to the offset projects, meanwhile, families in Nigeria get clean, safe cooking equipment and smallholder farmers in Brazil enjoy protected lands.
Many trust, therefore, that the voluntary carbon market has come of age.
Ed Rumsey, Managing Partner at Permian Global, an organisation working for the protection and recovery of tropical forests, added he believes nature-based carbon offsets are a credible part of any mitigation strategy.
According to Permian Global, new issuances were worth the equivalent of around 365 million tonnes of Co2 last year, a rise of 65% year on year.
Could rising prices make it unaffordable for some companies to offset? Yes, but that might not be a bad thing from an environmental perspective.
“Carbon markets offer something unique that other types of finances do not,” claimed Larsen.
Further, a greater mix of projects, with a focus on both carbon removal initiatives and projects aiming to preserve and restore natural carbon sinks, is needed.
“High quality nature-based solutions make sense from a portfolio point of view,” Larsen said.