Doubling Down to Avoid Double-Counting

24 June 2019

Today, ECO is redoubling its efforts, and sharing not one, but two pieces about Article 6! You guessed it, this one is about double counting…
There is no time to double-back on this. Parties, remember when you signed the Paris Agreement? That’s when you agreed to avoid double-counting.

Corresponding adjustments must be applied to all credits transferred, both from inside and outside of NDCs, and regardless of whether they are used towards an NDC or any other climate commitment.  ECO is frightened by the prospect of CORSIA, the international aviation’s carbon market, going ahead in 2021 without proper accounting rules having been agreed on by the UNFCCC. Additionally, transparency must be ensured, and the thought of having to track credits around the world is making ECO dizzy. Avoiding double counting will take a combination of proper accounting rules and sufficient transparency to ensure those rules work. Simply reporting transfers without actually adjusting the relevant emissions account (based on the Party’s inventory) is not enough to ensure environmental integrity or proper accounting.  

Preventing double-counting is one aspect of ensuring the environmental integrity of carbon markets. Robust rules must be applied to all aspects of 6.2, 6.4, and all other potential or future mechanisms where mitigation outcomes are transferred between countries or used for other international purposes (e.g. by airlines under CORSIA).

Environmental integrity is, well, integral to Article 6. The atmosphere only counts emissions once.  Let’s not delude ourselves with fuzzy accounting tricks.