Carbon Market Fundamentals

As corporate stakeholders demand that organizations reduce emissions to limit contributions to climate change, carbon markets have become more relevant than ever. It’s important to understand these markets and how to responsibly engage with them to reduce the risks of an ineffective carbon management plan. We will start the course with the basics of carbon markets: purpose, terminology, and key events and drivers that have converged to create today’s market dynamics. Next, we will discuss compliance and voluntary markets, and how these differ, along with examples. We will assess different types of projects, and their characteristics (in terms of number of offsets generated vs. the value of those offsets), before discussing the seven key metrics used to assess projects. We will end the course by examining how analysts and management teams can engage with carbon markets and conduct due diligence around project quality.