Dr Anne-Marie Warris, Greenhouse Gas expert at LRQA has been quoted in a recent article in the India Times, which talks about how global warming has been successful in creating a growing consciousness to trade carbon emissions.

According to Dr Anne-Marie Warris, "The voluntary carbon market refers to any sale or purchase of emission credits or emission reductions that occur outside a regulated market. A regulated market is one set up by governments such as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS)."
Voluntary carbon markets have historically served as sources of experimentation and innovation in the carbon markets.

However, "Regulated markets like CDM and EU ETS are set up by governments or the United Nations and include registry trading, which allows only regulated credits, so the registries associated with regulated markets would not allow trading of voluntary credits.

"Voluntary markets need registries to track trades to eliminate double trading and also to allow forward trades. Voluntary markets must develop their own registries both because their voluntary carbon units can not be traded on the regulated market registry platform and for credibility and transparency," according to Dr Anne-Marie Warris.

"So far the voluntary carbon market has been characterized by being restricted to trading only occurring between buyers of emission units and sellers who are the projects or organizations whose activities have generated an emission reduction (there are no options, forward trades, etc., as occurs in other energy markets). The main reason for this is a lack of a formal register to track trades," she adds.

Read the full article written in the India Times, 15th January 2008.

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LRQA Greenhouse Gas team
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Email: climate-change@lrqa.com

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Alex Briggs
Marketing Communications Manager
alex.briggs@lrqa.com

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