UN carbon market stuck in legal limbo
Following the postponement of Cop26, offset developers and investors must wait many months for uncertainty to be resolved
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC’s) carbon market is trapped in legal limbo, as countries have failed to reach agreement on whether it should be brought into the new global climate regime. Developers and investors around the world face almost a year of not knowing whether their clean-energy projects will earn the carbon offsets that they rely on to guarantee their viability. The problem stems from UN negotiators’ failure to reach consensus on a market mechanism to support the Paris Agreement. The 2015 treaty set out the broad principles of a global offset market that would help climate finance to flow to emerging and developing nations and assist them in bringing down
Also in this section
28 March 2025
The massive expansion of the Northern Lights project in Norway is the clearest sign yet that the European oil and gas companies mean business when it comes to CCS
27 March 2025
Awards celebrate global innovation, leadership and achievement across the energy sector’s people, projects, technologies and companies.
20 March 2025
While advanced economies debate peak fossil fuel demand, billions of people still lack access to reliable and affordable energy, especially in the Global South
14 March 2025
Ignoring questions of sustainability will not make the problems they focus on go away
