Carbon farming: How big corporations are driving the EU’s carbon removals agenda
This report was published by the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy (IATP).
The European Commission (EC) sees itself as a trailblazer in creating an overarching framework to certify all kinds of carbon removals. “Carbon farming” — primarily, carbon sequestration in land sinks, such as forests or soils — has become a new buzzword in recent climate debates, and the EC is promoting carbon farming as a key solution in the upcoming European Union (EU) Carbon Removal Certification Framework.
This report shows that “carbon farming” is part of a rapidly growing corporate agenda pushed by big polluters from the agriculture and fossil fuel industry alike. It plays a crucial role in corporate net-zero pledges that rely on the assumption that companies’ continued and even increased emissions can be balanced out by removing carbon from the atmosphere, particularly by buying carbon offsets. Corporate polluters see the new framework as a massive opportunity to generate great amounts of carbon credits that will allow continued emissions and delay urgently needed emissions cuts. The EC framework will likely allow the trade of carbon farming credits on voluntary carbon markets and possibly even the integration into government-run compliance schemes as early as 2030.
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