What’s in Store for Voluntary Agricultural Carbon Markets?

Abstract

Consumers and investors are putting increased pressure on corporations, governments, and other entities to reduce their environmental footprint. A recent article in Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy by Wongpiyabovorn, Plastina, and Crespi (2022) examines this issue. An increasing number of companies and governments are pledging to become carbon neutral or carbon negative over the next few decades. Until the technologies to achieve those goals become available at reasonable costs, a pathway to reducing overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the production, transportation, consumption, and disposal of goods and services is to purchase carbon credits in the voluntary market and use them to offset emissions.