Shelagh Whitley, Voluntary Asset Origination and Placement, Commercial Division, Camco
What do you and your organisation do in the Carbon Markets sector?
Camco is a leading sustainable energy and carbon business with one of the world's largest carbon carbon portfolios. We generate carbon credits by partnering with companies to identify, co-develop and manage CDM, JI and voluntary projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are also active in carbon management and carbon footprinting for public and private sector organizations that are looking to manage and/or offset their carbon emissions. I manage our voluntary asset portfolio to help organizations select carbon offsets that meet their goals in terms of project type, location, and sustainable development benefits.
What do you consider to be the most interesting developments and biggest challenges in the European voluntary carbon market at this time?
The biggest challenge for the European voluntary carbon market is the current economic downturn. The majority of the current commitments in the voluntary market are from private sector entities either acting on a speculative basis or meeting corporate social responsibility commitments. As these entities come under increasing financial pressure it will be critical that they continue to recognize the benefits of mitigating and offsetting GHG emissions as part of overall energy management and sustainability strategies.
What are the challenges facing standardization of the market?
The market has made very strong progress in the last two years in terms of developing internationally recognized standards, with third party validation and verification protocols, and backed up by registry systems. The challenge now is for a wide range of project types to be put through these standards, and for these registries to begin issuing credits, thereby providing evidence that these are robust systems that drive emission reductions that are additional to those achieved through the compliance carbon markets.
What are the barriers to project developers looking to generate offsets?
The main barrier is the same to that found in the compliance markets, a lack of human capital in the form of validators and verifiers required to audit projects. As the market becomes more mature this barrier should become less significant.
Another barrier is that often the VER price which can be commanded by projects in the market is not high enough to allow projects to meet their financing requirements. This is particularly true for smaller projects in less developed countries, which are those which also struggle to issue credits through the compliance carbon markets.
What safeguards are required to ensure sustainable growth?
To ensure sustainable growth it is critical that the credibility of the market is maintained. For this it is important that actors in the market continue to use robust internationally recognized standards and registries for the generation and selling of carbon credits, along with investing time and capital in projects which have significant sustainable development benefits.
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