As more companies commit to cutting their emissions to net zero, the offsets they purchase, to make up for carbon pollution they do not reduce themselves, could spur development of clean technologies like hydrogen fuel, market backers said this week.
Carbon market investments in hydrogen, greener aviation fuel and technologies that suck planet-heating gases from the air "maximize our probability... we get those technologies when we really need them," said Mark Carney, a U.N. climate envoy.
But critics of efforts to scale up problem-plagued markets for carbon offsets say they threaten to undermine lagging emissions-cutting efforts further and will be hard to operate in a transparent and effective way, despite planned reforms.