Improving the Integrity and Efficiency of Carbon Offsets

Carbon offsets play a major role in many corporations’ net-zero targets. However, the offsets industry faces major challenges. Abatement projects have incentives to over-report their emissions reductions to increase profitability. Carbon offset buyers have no way of telling apart high-quality and low-quality projects. True emissions savings are widely believed to fall well short of promised reductions. This research will contribute to the debate around carbon offsets by understanding what market design features can enable funding to flow towards the most effective carbon abatement technologies. To do so, this project will use uniquely detailed data and state-of-the-art econometric techniques to measure true abatement for a global database of offset projects. This project will study how different attributes—project location, technology, developer, or buyer—predict offset quality and price.

Arthur van Benthem

Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy

Arthur van Benthem is an expert in environmental and energy economics, exploring the economic efficiency of energy policy. He is a faculty fellow at the Kleinman Center and an associate professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton.

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