Publications
Publications
- March 2024
- Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly
Establishing the Foundation for Carbon Trading Markets
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Karthik Ramanna and Marc Roston
Abstract
Poor measurement practices and inadequate controls have led to extensive trading of carbon offset instruments that do not materially reduce the supply of atmospheric GHG. We introduce five carbon offset accounting principles, built from fundamental financial-accounting concept and practices, for recognizing assets that capture and sequester atmospheric GHG, and for companies that want to use these assets to offset their E-liabilities. Applying the principles leads to rigorous measurement and auditing of the offsets, enabling trading markets to develop to encourage new investment in assets and technologies that remove GHG from the atmosphere and sequester them indefinitely.
Keywords
Carbon Offsetting; Accounting; Carbon Accounting; E-liabilities; Measurement; Trading; Environmental Accounting; Environmental Sustainability
Citation
Kaplan, Robert S., Karthik Ramanna, and Marc Roston. "Establishing the Foundation for Carbon Trading Markets." Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly 2, no. 2 (March 2024): 48–57.