West African Alliance on carbon markets and climate finance becomes carbon neutral by compensating the real cost of its travel emissions
Within three years, members, country representatives and mandated experts of the West African Alliance on Carbon Markets and Climate Finance have been organizing and participating regularly at workshops, UNFCCC negotiations and conferences and took more than 170 regional and international flights on its behalf.
In today’s voluntary carbon market, the price of carbon emissions is much lower than the economic impact, or real cost of carbon emissions. To bridge this gap, the Alliance has decided to purchase an amount of credits that exceeds the calculated volume of emissions generated but meets their actual social and ecological cost.
The Alliance has now adopted an ambitious carbon neutrality strategy to compensate the environmental impact of its travel induced emissions. First, the Alliance intends to compensate not only for the release of carbon dioxide, but also of other pollutants, such as nitrogen and carbon monoxide. To that end, atmosfair’s widely approved flight emission calculator, which factors in these pollutants, was used to calculate the emissions resulting from air travels. Second, the compensation budget was obtained by applying the Shadow Price of Carbon (SPC) to the emissions thus calculated. This methodology, used by the World Bank, places a monetary value on CO2 emissions which reflects their actual cost to society and the environment. For the period considered (2017-2020), the SPC amounts to USD 78 / EUR 69 per tonne of CO2 on average.
The Alliance carried out a comprehensive assessment in order to identify suitable and high-performing CDM-registered carbon projects in the West African region. The assessment led to the selection of the CDM- and Gold Standard-certified PoA 5067 project[1], which promotes the dissemination of improved cooking wood stoves to households in Nigeria. A total of 950CERs have been purchased and cancelled on behalf of the Alliance to compensate the 169tCO2e that have been released due to its activities.
The conclusion of this process represents a first step toward fulfilling the carbon neutrality ambition of the Alliance and demonstrates how the Alliance can support and promote impactful carbon projects in West Africa.
Dakar,
August 20th, 2020
