List Of Terms

This is a term often used to describe methane gas (natural gas).

California has its own cap and trade program that functions in the state and with international offsets.

Legislation that sets a jurisdiction-wide limit or “cap” on emissions while allowing corporations to save money by distributing emissions cuts among themselves to wherever they can be made most cheaply. Cap and Invest is the same as a cap and trade instrument but claims to invest the revenue back into the community. See details in the Air section.

Also referred to as Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage and Carbon Capture and Sequestration. A polluting corporation captures emissions, compresses it and stores it underground. The technology has been used for more than 40 years to push oil out of the ground. It can be used as an offset. See details in the Land section.

Emissions reduction “equivalent” that corporations or states can purchase as a cheap pollution right allowing them to continue polluting above an agreed-upon cap. Many offset projects have been documented to bring harm to local communities, especially to communities impacted the most by climate change, including Indigenous Peoples, People of Color, impoverished communities, women and forest dependent communities.

Carbon trading or carbon tax programs that result in a monetary value being attached to units of carbon dioxide pollution. These programs include cap and trade, carbon offsets, REDD+, carbon fee and dividend, baseline and credit, baseline and offset and so on.

A price mechanism that estimates the amount of CO2 produced from burning a fuel and multiplies that by a base tax. There are multiple ways a carbon tax can be implemented, and several are operating around the world. See the World Bank State and Trends of Carbon Pricing for more information on existing programs. Importantly, carbon taxes do not keep fossil fuels underground. See details in the Air section.. Carbon Fee and Dividend is the same as a carbon tax, but proponents claim the revenue will be paid to the local communities either directly or through government investments.

The largest carbon offsetting program in the world, set up for the Kyoto Protocol. The CDM allows industrialized countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment to evade it by buying offset credits from projects sited in the global South. Under the Paris Agreement there are plans to change the CDM but at the time of writing things are still unclear.

An invention that saves corporations regulatory costs by giving them legal permission to continue polluting with carbon dioxide, as long as they sponsor projects that reduce supposedly “climatically equivalent” emissions of other greenhouse gases.

Carbon dioxide.

Conference of the Parties, the annual conference of the parties to the UNFCCC.

This term is used to bring attention to climate change policies that do not keep fossil fuels underground, and that support corporate industry profit over communities. Some examples include: carbon pricing, offsets, CCS, and many more examples discussed throughout this tool kit.

a fund that was established at the COP 16 in Cancun in 2010 as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention under Article 11. The GCF claims it will support projects, programs, policies and other activities in developing countries, and can be used as a fund to proliferate carbon pricing and is currently used to fund REDD+ programs.

Greenhouse gases, atmospheric gases responsible for causing global warming and climate change. The GHGs recognized under the Kyoto Protocol are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Other less prevalent but very powerful greenhouse gases are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). Climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as models from other scientific bodies, indicate that global concentrations of GHGs have been rising steadily over the past 100 years. As atmospheric concentrations of GHGs increase, the greenhouse blanket gets thicker. This causes heat to be trapped in the lower layers of the atmosphere and causes global average temperatures to rise. CO2, the most common GHF, is assigned an index value = 1. Index values for other gases (CH4 = 21; NO2 = 310; HFC-23 = 11,700; PFC = 6,500) are all highly controversial.

International Panel on Climate Change. The scientific body that advises the UNFCCC.

Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes, units traded in a scheme for exchange that links carbon pricing plans between nation-states.

The Kyoto Protocol resulted from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Kyoto, Japan in December of 1997. It originally contained negotiated commitments by 38 developed countries and countries in transition to reduce emissions 5.2% below 1990 baseline levels for the period 2008-2012. The principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) stated that only industrialized countries responsible for historic emissions would be required to reduce pollution levels. The Protocol paved the way for carbon trading, offset and REDD+ programs. The Paris Agreement in 2015 forced all countries to commit themselves to some form of emissions reductions – undermining the principle of CBDR – based on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).

Another term used for REDD-type programs for conservation projects currently being proposed by the UN and other institutions.

This is a misleading term that uses offsets programs to subtract from total emissions. In other words: Total Emissions – Offset = Net Zero Emissions. Corporations can claim net zero emissions while continuing to pollute.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, including through conservation, “sustainable management” of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. Most REDD+ schemes are sited in the global South. Communities that rely on the forests risk not being able to use their forest after the offset agreements are made. See details in the Land section.

Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap and trade program in the US that involves nine Northeastern states (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont). The first phase of RGGI ran from 2009 to 2015. A ten percent reduction was expected by the end of 2019. RGGI has played an insignificant role in climate mitigation efforts in the region following the 2008 financial crash, lower gas prices, overallocation of pollution rights by the states involved and other reasons.