adelphi is re-analysing the market for voluntary compensation of greenhouse gas emissions

Together with “sustainable”, adelphi will carry out a comprehensive analysis of the German market for voluntary compensation of greenhouse gas emissions on behalf of the German Emissions Trading Office (DEHSt) at the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) by May 2014. This study intends to verify the findings of a preliminary analysis carried out in 2010 and analyse the current conditions.

More and more people want to compensate their harmful emissions by avoiding greenhouse gases in other areas. Popular examples are compensations for air travels, which travel agencies and airlines offer to their customers when booking. More and more companies offer green “climate neutral” products or provide an entire range of climate neutral business operations. Over the past few years, the number of providers of compensation services and the range of climate-neutral products in Germany has rapidly increased. However, so far there is a lack of recognition procedures and binding standards for such voluntary compensation measures. This leads to a fluctuating quality on a market that is insufficiently transparent for consumers.
In that regard, the German market analysis shall create more transparency and provide an overview of the stakeholders and their profits. For that purpose, the current developments of the compensation market are examined in view of supply and demand. The newly collected data will be compared with the results of the last market study from 2010, which was also created by adelphi and sustainable.
Subsequently, the results of the analysis will be compared with trends in the international market in order to classify the developments of the German market. In addition, qualitative differences between the voluntary market and the compulsory market will be analysed: Through a differentiated assessment of the contribution of the voluntary market particularly in terms of quality and the credibility of projects, the project shall establish greater transparency for the consumers of compensation services and promote approaches to protect the climate as well as sustainability. The gained insights will serve as a basis to provide the DEHSt with recommendations, for example in view of the need to support quality standards for compensation projects.
Furthermore, a consolidated quality comparison of different standards will be prepared for consumers. The resulting transparency of the project or certificate features is a prerequisite for establishing the importance of the voluntary market as a complement to the compulsory market and for ensuring that it opens up further potentials for global climate protection, sustainability and innovation.