About two decades ago, the market for carbon ‘offsets’ seemed to be thriving. Under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, companies concerned about their emissions could earn credits for investing in projects that conserved energy or built renewable capacity elsewhere. These certificates could then be traded freely. The market collapsed in the early 2010s, largely thanks to policy errors in Japan and the European Union. Even before that, however, many had come to believe it wasn’t worth saving. About 70 per cent of projects were located in India and China. Complaints had multiplied that too many of them were actually dodgy attempts at ‘greenwashing’.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/