Letter on carbon: Can carbon markets deliver?

Offset integrity issues and low prices are undermining markets’ potential to drive low-carbon investment

One of the overarching themes of International Energy Week (IE Week) conference in London was the importance of carbon markets to the transition. Compliance and voluntary markets are crucial for channelling capital into low-carbon technologies. The need for accurate and predicable carbon pricing has never been greater as companies need to externalise this cost to justify massive investments in CCS and other technologies. But as the transition moves into what is arguably its most critical phase, are carbon markets having the impact that they should be at this stage of the net-zero project? Many governments are certainly betting on them to drive abatement of CO₂. About 20% of the world’s emiss