Offsets can help companies reduce their carbon footprints and drive much-needed investment to projects that lower emissions or draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But not all offsets are created equal. Before investing, it’s critical to understand the pros and cons of different kinds of projects and how to build a portfolio of offsets that delivers impact and reliability. In this session, leaders with extensive experience of evaluating offsets will demystify key concepts, such as additionality and “avoided” versus “removed” emissions, and explain the roles played by offset developers, brokers and verifiers. 

Investor interest in ESG issues continues to expand, pressuring corporations to go deeper with the accounting associated with their sustainability strategy. Meanwhile, companies have been making increasingly ambitious pledges to reduce or offset the emissions within their operations and their supply chain. Yet there are so many questions about the future.

In this session, experts will cover how the wild world of corporate ESG and carbon markets might evolve, and what pain points and opportunities are on the horizon.

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must build a new carbon economy: an ecosystem of companies, capital and policies that work together to remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. That economy is now taking shape. In this session, one of the founders of the Circular Carbon Network (CCN), the organization that has assembled the sector’s definitive dataset, will present an overview of key trends: Who is investing, where those funds are going and which areas are poised for the biggest growth?

The market for products made from captured carbon is worth an estimated $1 trillion a year in the United States alone. Everything from plastics to jet fuel can be manufactured from carbon dioxide drawn from the atmosphere or diverted from industrial emissions. Thanks to new regulatory incentives and technologies, the carbontech market is now taking off. In this session, entrepreneurs, policy experts and investors will showcase their work and explain how your company can capture a part of the carbontech market.

Regenerative agriculture has the potential to draw down billions of tons of carbon dioxide while simultaneously restoring soil health. Yet interest in the approach from producers, food companies and legislators has not translated into widespread adoption of regenerative methods. The good news is that new data and initiatives from entrepreneurs, policy makers and technologists looks set to take regenerative agriculture mainstream over the next few years. Come to this session to learn about the latest soil science results and to discover what the data means for the food industry.

Investing in forests is about more than offsetting emissions. Successful forestry projects can bring benefits to ecosystems and economies. Yet forest projects come with challenges. How can you be sure that the trees won't be harvested? And what happens if the forest absorbs less carbon than expected? Come to this session to hear from an expert panel with deep experience of doing due diligence on forest projects, and to understand how your company can get involved.

Investing in farming practices that draw down carbon dioxide is an exciting new option for companies interested in using offsets to reduce their carbon footprints. In this session, you'll be introduced to what we do and don't know about the potential of these offsets. Leading experts will explain how soils store carbon, why soil sequestration delivers much more than carbon reductions and what your company needs to consider before investing in this rapidly growing segment of the offsets market.

The need for carbon dioxide removal is clear, but there are many different strategies for growing the technologies, practices and organizations involved. As the sector gathers momentum, it’s critical that the transition is driven by more than just economics. Carbon removal that incorporates equity and justice considerations can lead to more successful outcomes if leaders make smart decisions about which projects get funded, where the projects are based and how local businesses and communities are engaged. In this session, carbon removal experts will unpack these issues and provide practical advice for organizations that want to ensure that removal projects contribute to a more equitable future.

As billions of dollars flow into alternative protein startups, an intriguing new technology has joined the race to shape the future of food: microbes that transform carbon dioxide, methane, energy and other inputs into proteins that can form the basis of many foods. Come to this session to learn how this new approach can drawdown atmospheric carbon and become a component of the emerging carbon economy, while also competing with other alternative proteins and propeling our food systems towards a more sustainable future.

As the need for drawdown becomes clear, the roster of carbon removal technologies is beginning to grow. Some, such as direct air capture, are now relatively well known. Coming up fast behind those more established technologies are a host of exciting new options, some of which will soon be ready for market. In this session, the entrepreneurs and inventors behind some of these innovative new approaches will explain how their technologies offer unique advantages, and how interested companies can partners to accelerate development.

It’s not so long since going carbon neutral was considered ambitious. But in little more than a year, a handful of companies have announced new carbon targets that have redefined what ambition looks like in this arena. Some are going carbon negative, or even paying back the company’s entire carbon debt. Others have committed to attaching carbon labels to all of their products. Many of those involved freely admit that they are not certain how they will achieve these goals. One thing is clear: Doing so will require collaboration across supply chains and the sharing of best practices. Come to this session to hear from the carbon program managers who are figuring out how to take corporate commitments to the next level.

No one would say it's easy to measure and reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions. But doing so can seem easy in comparison to the often daunting task of tackling Scope 3. This session features industry leaders who have worked with partners to account for and mitigate emissions from their supply chains. Come to hear how insetting and other forms of collaboration can be a win-win that cuts greenhouse gases and builds stronger supply-chain relationships.

America's forests face multiple threats, including disease, invasive species, fire and more. Thankfully, the ingredients needed to tackle these threats already exist. We can protect our forests through active forest management and market incentizes, including thinning trees, and wood sourced in this way can be used to produce electricity, fertilize crops and create building materials. Carbon markets are creating other opportunities for landowners to be compensated for better management practices. What’s needed is collaborative action by lawmakers and companies to create the incentives and infrastructure that will accelerate the growth of these markets. Come to this session to hear from the entrepreneurs, nonprofits and activists who are making this happen, and learn how to get involved.

Some offset projects come with additional positive outcomes that go beyond reducing atmospheric carbon. Many of these co-benefits line up with the UN Sustainable Development Goals: To broaden access to clean water, improve indoor air quality or create new revenue opportunities for local communities, for example. In this session, you’ll hear from leaders who have helped develop co-benefit projects and learn about the reasons for investing in these win-win offsets.

Conservation techniques and new technologies have the potential to sequester billions of tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide in coastal and deep ocean waters. Yet rival drawdown solutions, namely soils and forests, are attracting more money, attention and resources than “blue carbon” projects. In this session, you will hear from the entrepreneurs and conservationists who are working to change that. Learn how part of the solution to our climate crisis lies in mangrove forests, deep ocean pumps and other methods for storing carbon in the world’s ocean waters.

Many of the ingredients needed to reduce or even eliminate carbon emissions from construction now exist, but architects and contractors do not necessarily know about these options. In this session, you will learn how to ensure that construction projects large and small can be designed to include materials and processes that minimize emissions. Industry experts will survey the world of next-gen building materials, from carbon-negative concrete to mass timber, and explain how you can dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of your next project.

You’ve measured your company’s carbon footprint and set targets for reducing it. Now you have to do the hard work of implementing emissions cuts. How do you motivate employees across the company to join the effort? One solution is to set an internal price on carbon. It’s a method that’s been shown to accelerate progress, but it can also be a bureaucratic headache for everyone involved. Hear from people who have navigated this challenge inside major corporations and are successfully reducing their companies’ emissions.