Recommendations for the European Carbon Certification Framework

8 July 2022 - Climate Report - By : Adeline FAVREL / Claudine FOUCHEROT / Julia GRIMAULT / Valentin BELLASSEN

To achieve the climate goals of the UE, The European Commission wants to create a carbon certification framework to encourage carbon storage in the land sector. The challenge is to develop a common and harmonised framework at the European level by better relying on the expertise acquired through existing certification frameworks. With this study, I4CE propose 7 recommendations, inspired by both our concrete experience with the French Label Bas-Carbone to which we have contributed, and by 15 years of research on carbon certification.

 

 

The European Commission wants to create a carbon certification framework to encourage carbon storage in the land sector

The European climate law (Regulation (EU) 2021/1119), published in July 2021, requires the EU to achieve a balance between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals by 2050 at the latest, and to achieve negative emissions (i.e. net absorption) thereafter.

 

Currently, the agricultural sector is a net emitter and European carbon sinks have been declining for several years. The land sector, however, is essential for achieving a carbon neutral economy, as it can capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in soils and biomass. To encourage this sector to carry out climate action, financial incentives are needed to help land managers significantly increase carbon sinks. In order to ensure their effectiveness, such financing must be accompanied by tools to measure the real impact of the actions financed.

 

With this in mind, in December 2021 the European Commission (EC) adopted the Communication on `Sustainable Carbon Cycles’ (European Commission, 2021), which includes plans to build a European certification for carbon removals to guarantee the impact of funded projects. A multitude of public and private frameworks already exist in Europe and internationally, but they do not have the same levels of requirements and the same rules for Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of carbon gains. The challenge will be to develop a common and harmonised framework at the European level without reinventing the wheel, by better relying on the expertise acquired through existing certification frameworks. After a public consultation opened in early 2022, the proposed regulation should be published by the end of the year.

 

 

7 recommendations from the French experience with the Label Bas-Carbone

We propose 7 recommendations, inspired by both our concrete experience with the French Label Bas-Carbone to which I4CE has contributed, and by 15 years of research on carbon certification. These 7 recommendations have been chosen based on the topics most debated at the European level (recommendations 1 to 5) and the innovations proposed and tested in the French Label Bas-Carbone (recommendations 2, 6 and 7).

 

Recommendation 1: Emissions reductions and emissions removals should not be split

Currently, the certification planned by the European Commission only concerns CO2 removals, and not emission reductions which would be covered by other mechanisms. We believe however, it is necessary to include in the scope of the certification framework not only storage, but also emission reductions of N2O and CH4 from the agricultural sector as well as indirect emission reductions (emissions that are linked to the project but take place outside the project perimeter). Without this comprehensive view of a project’s climate impact, there is a risk of favouring practices that have a net negative impact. An example would be a biomass production project, which relies heavily on nitrogen fertilizers. With the scope chosen today, only the carbon sequestration linked to the biomass would be counted and not the emissions linked to the fertilisers.

 

This point is the subject of considerable debate, as some stakeholders see the risk that an increase in absorptions will conceal a lack of ambition in achieving the emission reduction targets. Broadening the scope, however, does not mean merging the two distinct objectives.

 

Following the example of what is required under the French Label Bas-Carbone, a differentiated accounting of emissions reductions and removals makes it possible to monitor the evolution of the carbon sink on the one hand and agricultural emissions on the other. This avoids the risk of opacity between objectives.

 

Recommendation 2: Ensuring strong environmental integrity

Achieving climate objectives must not mean we forget the other sustainability issues, in order to guarantee the environmental integrity of projects but also their acceptability. Integrating these issues properly requires discussion with stakeholders and the scientific community.

 

Several options are being tested or discussed as part of the French Label Bas-Carbone:

 

  • The establishment of safeguards such as a maximum density of livestock per hectare, a minimum number of tree species, or a ban on ploughing in the forest. They ensure that there are no major negative impacts on other sustainability issues without excessively increasing monitoring costs.
  • The development of indicators for the specific monitoring of issues other than carbon (biodiversity, soil, socio-economic impacts, etc.). The advantage of this is that it allows the valuation of additional co-benefits, however it is more expensive to implement.
  • For the agricultural sector, prioritising accounting for emissions on the basis of per-hectare emissions rather than quantity produced, in order to avoid discouraging expansion and to not encourage optimisation only.

 

Recommendation 3: Diversifying funding sources

Many stakeholders are now questioning the purpose of a tool such as carbon certification: voluntary carbon offsetting or voluntary contribution to the global climate effort, Emission trading system (ETS), tool in the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Eco-schemes, etc.

 

Given the current average price of a ton of CO2 with the French Label, the future European framework should be considered more as a tool to channel different sources of financing more effectively towards low-carbon or carbon-positive projects than as a simple carbon offset tool. The question is therefore not `who should finance these projects’ but `how to coordinate the different sources of financing’.

 

Recommendation 4: Moving from a carbon market to mitigation regulation

The future certification framework, which will be voluntary, is an opportunity to test different practices and thus produce data on the abatement costs of these practices. In a second phase, this data will allow us to propose, where relevant, binding climate policies, such as regulations that would allow us to reinforce our climate ambitions.

 

Recommendation 5: Governance: Creating a European Certification Framework that builds on the existing standards by enhancing them

The question of the future of the existing labels and certifications is of great importance to the shareholders already involved in the certification processes. It will probably be necessary to have a higher level of centralisation to ensure that certification has the same value throughout Europe. As a first step, the European Commission should define common general guidelines for Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV), allowing frameworks and methods that respect these rules to continue to be used.

 

Recommendation 6: Providing robust MRV rules and using the discount principle to find an acceptable balance between accuracy and costs

The question of accessibility in terms of financial and administrative costs to certification is a point of concern for some stakeholders. The use of the rebate principle in the definition of MRV rules makes it possible to find an acceptable balance between the accuracy and robustness of the certification and the associated costs. A discount corresponds to a reduction in the emissions reductions allowed by the project, which accompanies less precise methodological choices. The discount principle thus makes it possible to guarantee the credibility of carbon credits while offering the possibility of using less stringent options to assess the carbon impact of a project.

 

Recommendation 7: Being pragmatic to avoid deterring action

Finally, a pragmatic approach is needed to avoid discouraging action or undermining the credibility of the system. Two examples to illustrate this.

 

1) Concerning the double claim: the French government considers that the same carbon gain can be accounted for twice at two different levels: once in a company’s carbon balance sheet and once in the country’s national inventory, as these are two distinct levels of accounting.

 

2) Concerning the risk of non-permanence: there are sometimes calls to extend the verification and control of forestry projects over several decades. This prospect is highly unlikely and not very credible. Perfectionism can be counter-productive, so we believe it is important to stick to clearly defined rules that can be verified in the field.

 

Click on this button to see the image

 

To learn more
  • 03/24/2023 Foreword of the week
    International Day of Forests: carbon certification, adaptation and carbon sink

    This week, for the International Day of Forests, I4CE offers you an overview of the forestry issues that are being debated in France and in Brussels. In our newsletter, you will discover a new blog post by Julia Grimault on European carbon certification and our latest analyses on the adaptation of French forests to climate change, the French carbon sink and the wood industry. 

  • 03/21/2023 Op-ed
    European Carbon Certification: the unlikely alliance

    The future European carbon certification framework is under intense debate. The first meeting of the expert group in charge of supporting the Commission has raised criticisms on the composition and mandate of this group, and the discussions have taken an unexpected turn by achieving the feat of bringing NGOs and CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) industrialists to an agreement against natural carbon sinks, those of our forests or our agricultural soils. Where does this unlikely alliance come from?

  • 12/02/2022 Foreword of the week
    European Carbon Certification must be demanding… and appealing

    How can we differentiate between projects that really enable carbon to be stored and those that only claim to do so? This is a complicated question when dealing with projects in agriculture and forestry, where quantifying carbon storage is complex, and where other environmental challenges, like the preservation of biodiversity, must also be taken into account. A complicated question, therefore, but one that needs an answer! Private actors and public authorities want to ensure that the agricultural and forestry projects financed in the name of the climate have a real environmental benefit.

See all publications
Press contact Amélie FRITZ Head of Communication and press relations Email
Subscribe to our mailing list :
I register !
Subscribe to our newsletter
Once a week, receive all the information on climate economics
I register !
Fermer