Startup Climeworks says it has come up with a way of making carbon credits more credible. It said today that it now uses a third-party verification process to certify its service of sucking carbon dioxide from the air and storing it underground. It’s the first time a company has achieved that on a meaningful scale using an outside auditor, The Wall Street Journal reported.
It’s an important milestone as carbon markets become more popular even as skepticism grows about the quality of credits. The new Climeworks process helps assure its clients, like Microsoft, Shopify and Stripe, that the credits they are buying to offset their own emissions actually help the environment.
But not every credit is created equal; for example, claiming to preserve trees when local forestry officials were already planning to do so. Other schemes allow companies to market themselves as being environmentally friendly without making any meaningful contributions.
That leaves plenty of room to still be skeptical about carbon markets. But the efforts of Climeworks to obtain outside verification could help validate the hype.
