| | | | |  | | By Jordan Wolman | | | | | 
Carbon offset projects are getting a helping hand from top U.S. officials. | Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images | BIG APPLE BUZZ — Something’s different about this year’s Climate Week in New York: The voluntary carbon market is getting serious hype. Your Long Game host (and his editor) can’t fault you for being confused. After all, the VCM has taken a substantial lashing over the last 12 months or so as carbon offset projects face accusations of false or exaggerated environmental benefits and a top verifier of corporate climate goals was left in turmoil over the issue. And for the second year in a row, the VCM contracted in 2023 from its 2021 peak of $2 billion. But the market is getting a red carpet rollout in the Big Apple — and the heightened attention is unlikely to fade when the glitzy events and climate superstars leave Manhattan at the end of the week. Climate Week is holding its first ever “VCM Day” on Wednesday, sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and featuring Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and U.N. Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen along with other corporate and government officials. It’s a show of force granting the private sector-led carbon market more legitimacy than perhaps ever before. “We’re at an inflection point,” said Ricardo Bayon, founder and partner of Encourage Capital, an investment firm focused on environmental and social issues. “This market has seen numerous inflection points. But what's different about this transition is it’s bigger and is more in the public eye. More people have heard about carbon offsets and carbon markets. The stakes are higher in this transition.” Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Rostin Behnam will also be at VCM Day, fresh off his agency’s approval of carbon market guidance meant to limit fraud and deception in financial exchanges that list credits backed by projects that have the potential to both mitigate climate change and help disaster-prone areas adapt to a world with more extreme weather events. Carbon offset projects and the credits they produce are also set to take center stage two months from now at COP29, where the Biden administration is planning to pitch the idea of leveraging private sector financing through the VCM into a key part of a package to fund international climate aid. It’s one way for the U.S. to scrape together additional money in the face of Republican opposition to spending more taxpayer money on the global effort — even though it relies on potentially dodgy projects that face little regulatory oversight and only now are getting scrutiny from private groups. One of those groups, the Voluntary Carbon Market Initiative, is eager to turn the page. “The VCM has a critical potential to leverage important sources of capital and finance for private action, in particular emissions reductions and removals across emerging markets in the developing world,” said Mark Kenber, VCMI’s executive director. “One reason for VCM Day is to show the world that yes, people were right to be concerned about the quality of credits and projects, concerned about the quality of how companies use credits as part of their climate transitions. But we're now in the next phase of the VCM.”
| | CASH DASH — White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi spoke with our Josh Siegel about the Biden administration’s push to get as many climate investments as it can out the door ahead of November elections that could put former President Donald Trump back in the Oval Office. Zaidi also seized on the opportunity to frame Republicans’ desire to roll back parts of the Inflation Reduction Act as an attempt to kill the jobs that the law’s tax credits and incentives are creating. He said the GOP would face a political backlash for pulling grants and loans for projects in red districts and for technologies like nuclear, hydrogen and battery development that have found bipartisan support. “So if you take the House Republican caucus at its word that they are for energy security, they are for American energy production, they are for American manufacturing, they're for jobs and for the middle class, well, then these policies that they're talking about — pulling back on loans to catalyze investment in America's energy strength — it just doesn't make any sense,” Zaidi said. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a key Trump ally, said the former president is aware of the potential pitfalls of trying to revoke clean energy and manufacturing tax credits and that Republicans are instead focusing on clawing back unspent dollars, which might be “very appealing to swing voters” who “know we’ve overspent in lots of areas.”
| | | | PLASTIC PUNCH — Opening a new front in the battle against big oil, California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil, accusing the petrochemical giant of misleading the public about the environmental and public health harms from its plastic production. “Our 147-page complaint makes it clear that ExxonMobil promoted and vastly increased its production of single-use plastic while doling out false promises that its plastics are sustainable and recyclable,” Bonta said at a news conference following a two-and-a-half year investigation. “It's time ExxonMobil pays the price for its deceit. It's time ExxonMobil is held accountable.” The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, is the second part of a double whammy for Exxon. Bonta sued the company and four other oil majors over climate change damages last year, reflecting a desire to target both Exxon’s oil business and its plastics-making division, which could become an increasingly important source of revenue as oil demand for fuel drops with the rise of electric vehicles. Bonta, who’s mulling a run for California governor in 2026, accuses Exxon of violating state nuisance, natural resources, water pollution, false advertising and unfair competition laws. The suit seeks an injunction to block “further pollution, impairment, and destruction, as well as to prevent Exxon Mobil from making any further false or misleading statements about plastics recycling and its plastics operations.” Bonta also wants Exxon to pay large sums of money into an abatement fund. The attorney general is also targeting Exxon’s promotion of recycling as a solution to the pollution crisis. The lawsuit points to the company’s campaigns for advanced or chemical recycling as significant proof of deception, calling it a “a public relations stunt meant to encourage the public to keep purchasing single-use plastics.” Exxon, unsurprisingly, pushed back. “For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn't effective,” Lauren Kight, a company spokesperson, said in a statement. “They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills. The first step would be to acknowledge what their counterparts across the U.S. know: advanced recycling works.”
| | COP’S BANKER — The U.N. fund created to help vulnerable nations cope with the cost of disasters wrought by global warming will be led by a Senegalese and American national who has worked with the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa, Sara Schonhardt reports. Ibrahima Cheikh Diong will assume the executive director post on Nov. 1, just ahead of U.N. COP29 talks in Azerbaijan. He will manage a fund that was launched on the first day of last year’s climate summit, where countries pledged more than $650 million for the disaster fund. “The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage will make a significant difference to those disproportionately affected, and I take this responsibility with humility and a full commitment to serve,” Diong, who was appointed to serve a four-year term, said in a statement. He currently serves as special representative of the president of Arab Bank, where he advises on environmental, social and governance issues; climate finance; and private sector development.
| | GAME ON — Welcome to the Long Game, where we tell you about the latest on efforts to shape our future. Join us every Tuesday as we keep you in the loop on the world of sustainability. Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott and reporter Jordan Wolman. Reach us at gmott@politico.com and jwolman@politico.com. Sign up for the Long Game. It's free!
| | — Wall Street’s biggest banks are among the major global lenders pledging to boost their support for nuclear power, according to the Financial Times. — The Washington Post takes a look at how developers on Texas’ Galveston Island are defying rising sea levels, while Reuters reports that the island nation of Tuvalu prepares for forced relocation of some of its residents. — Real-time pricing for renewables is making power usage free or even profitable for some European consumers. The Wall Street Journal examines whether it could happen here. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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