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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

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Daily Overview

Session

Forestry 2
Location: D-104
Session Chair: Yuqi Song, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)

Presentation 4

Selection and Over-Crediting in Forest-Based Carbon Offset Projects: A Comparison of Regulated and Voluntary Carbon Markets

Yuqi Song¹, Joseph Aldy², Noel Holbrook³, Xiaojie Gao⁴, Jonathan Thompson⁴

1: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China, People's Republic of; 2: Harvard Kennedy School, Resources for the Future, National Bureau of Economic Research, and Center for Strategic and International Studies, USA; 3: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Harvard Forest, Harvard University, USA; 4: Harvard Forest, Harvard University, USA

Discussant: Cristiano Franceschinis (Università degli Studi di Padova)

We undertake the first systematic analysis comparing and contrasting U.S. improved forest management (IFM) projects participating in the California regulated and global voluntary carbon offset markets. We link a novel geospatial dataset of IFM offset projects located in the U.S. Forest Northern Region to measurements of above-ground live carbon collected through U.S. Forest Service Forest and Inventory Analysis (FIA). Statistical and calibrated simulation analyses both provide evidence for market entrance selections and excessive offset credit issuance. As revealed by event study analysis and two-stage logistic regression with carbon trends, IFM projects on regulated and voluntary markets differ significantly in pre-market forest management relative to their statistical counterfactual forestlands with similar carbon storage capacities. Payoff estimations based on forest simulation modeling replicate this entrance outcome, illustrating that regulated market projects realize greater revenues under the regulated market rules than they would under the voluntary market rules, and likewise voluntary market projects realize greater revenues under the voluntary market rules. Using the simulation model, we also find that real-world market entrance outcomes match with the generous lower baselines implied in the IFM projects' registry documentation, rather than the more appropriate business-as-usual baselines. Because of that, regulated market projects are non-additional and voluntary market projects also issue about 1.8 times the offset credits of their justified emission reduction. While current offset markets promote forest-based projects as nature-based climate solutions, they also raise serious integrity concerns that may weaken overall incentives for carbon reduction by corporate buyers. Based on the results from a nested logistic model with simulation approximated project payoffs, switching to stricter business-as-usual baselines would solve the overcrediting problem, but also lower the market participation of forest-based projects, and reduce the potential of carbon offset markets to mitigate emissions through motivating forest conservations.