Sustainability Street: The Carbon Credit Debate

Mahesh Ramanujam of Global Network for Zero and CPE's Therese Fitzgerald discuss headwinds and tailwinds for offsetting.

Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in. For this episode, I’m tackling carbon credits with my guest Mahesh Ramanujam, CEO of Global Network for Zero and formerly the president & CEO of USGBC.

For Ramanujam, carbon credits are a necessary bridge to achieving net zero in commercial real estate and the world. Not everyone shares that view, so we talk about why carbon credits have a public relations problem and the need for greater transparency and more verification.

“Our work is to really make the invisible visible so that the visible becomes actionable so that the actionable things then could be scalable.” Ramanujam said.

Here are some highlights from our conversation:

  • Carbon credits defined (2:26)
  • Carbon credits under the microscope (5:33)
  • SBTi’s mixed message on credits (8:20
  • Offsetting vs. insetting (16:31)
  • The road to high-quality credits (20:52)
  • Growing the supply of carbon credits (24:08)

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