Science for successful, high-integrity voluntary climate initiatives

To meet the goals of the Paris Agreement global GHG emissions should reach “net-zero” by mid-century and be halved by 2030 compared to current levels. This requires immediate, rapid and large-scale emissions reductions across all sectors of the economy. Voluntary initiatives and pledges by non-state actors, such as the private sector, financial institutions, civil society, cities and subnational authorities could help fill the gap, mobilise finance and accelerate the transformation process. However, the integrity-related concerns of these actions must first be overcome and require better understanding of the actual climate impacts and other potential side-effects.

This action should advance the knowledge about the role of voluntary initiatives in achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal, including consistency and interactions with global/national government commitments, regulated markets and between each other. It should address barriers and weaknesses associated with voluntary initiatives, such as inconsistency of definitions and claims (e.g. net-zero, carbon positive, carbon negative, climate neutral, etc.), their environmental integrity, fragmentation, complexity, poor measurement, verification and reporting practices as well as concerns related to additionality, double counting, transparency, governance, and accounting of the wider social and ecological consequences.

The action should evaluate the role of compensation schemes in voluntary climate initiatives, and the implications for transition pathways. To this end, it should improve the understanding of the impacts of carbon offsets, assess their risks and limitations, investigate how offsets affect and interact with other emission abatement options, and under which conditions they could accelerate cost-effective mitigation. It should analyse the scientific integrity of various existing offsetting schemes, identify their strengths and weaknesses and develop clear scientific guidance about their proper use to safeguard climate-positive outcomes. This should include identification of synergies and avoidance of trade-offs with other policy objectives, such as biodiversity related ones, and full respect of the “do no significant harm” principle. Any promotion of offsetting schemes is out of scope of this call.

The action should also explore and assess different options for improved monitoring, reporting and verification of various voluntary climate initiatives, including through leveraging of satellite-based earth observation such as Copernicus/ Galileo/EGNOS.

Finally, it should enhance the modelling tools and integrated assessment frameworks to better integrate voluntary climate initiatives into transition pathway analysis and to address the specific needs of non-state actors (but not necessarily with a single model/tool).

Co-creation with various stakeholders in the private and public sectors, including actors from developing countries, is expected under this action to ensure that the outcomes produced remain relevant for the end-users.

Actions should envisage clustering activities with other relevant ongoing and selected projects for cross-projects cooperation and exchange of results, including as participation in joint meetings and communication events.