IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04889783.html

Do Carbon Offsets Offset Carbon?

Author

Listed:
  • Raphael Calel
  • Jonathan Colmer
  • Antoine Dechezleprêtre
  • Matthieu Glachant

    (CERNA i3 - Centre d'économie industrielle i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

We develop and implement a new method for identifying wasted subsidies and use it to provide systematic evidence of the misallocation of carbon offsets in the Clean Development Mechanism—the world's largest carbon offset program. Using newly constructed data on the locations and characteristics of over 1,000 wind farms in India, we estimate that at least 52 percent of approved carbon offsets were allocated to projects that would very likely have been built anyway. We estimate that the sale of these offsets to regulated polluters resulted in substantially higher global carbon dioxide emissions.(JEL H23, O13, Q42, Q54, Q58)

Suggested Citation

  • Raphael Calel & Jonathan Colmer & Antoine Dechezleprêtre & Matthieu Glachant, 2025. "Do Carbon Offsets Offset Carbon?," Post-Print hal-04889783, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04889783
    DOI: 10.1257/app.20230052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Estelle Cantillon & Aurélie Slechten, 2024. "Market Design for the Environment," NBER Chapters, in: New Directions in Market Design, pages 31-63, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Martielli, Francesco & Battisti, Enrico & Gonzalez-Cruz, Tomás Félix & Salvi, Antonio, 2025. "Carbon credits and financial performance: Exploring the moderating role of CSR strategy and corporate governance practices," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(PB).
    3. Liao, Ling & Diaz-Rainey, Ivan & Kuruppuarachchi, Duminda, 2025. "The interplay of carbon offset, renewable energy certificate and electricity markets in Australia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    4. Rodemeier, Matthias, 2023. "Willingness to Pay for Carbon Mitigation: Field Evidence from the Market for Carbon Offsets," IZA Discussion Papers 15939, IZA Network @ LISER.
    5. Kotchen, Matthew J. & Vogt, Andrew, 2025. "Is the emphasis on cofinancing good for environmental multilateral funds?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    6. Gregory Trencher & Sascha Nick & Jordan Carlson & Matthew Johnson, 2024. "Demand for low-quality offsets by major companies undermines climate integrity of the voluntary carbon market," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, December.
    7. Estelle Cantillon & Eric F Lambin & Beatrice Weder di Mauro, 2025. "Chapter 8: Designing and scaling up nature-based markets," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/402564, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    8. Filewod, Ben & McCarney, Geoff, 2023. "Avoiding leakage from nature-based offsets by design," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117928, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Thales A. P. West & Sven Wunder & Erin O. Sills & Jan Borner & Sami W. Rifai & Alexandra N. Neidermeier & Andreas Kontoleon, 2023. "Action needed to make carbon offsets from tropical forest conservation work for climate change mitigation," Papers 2301.03354, arXiv.org.
    10. Fabra, Natalia & Reguant, Mar, 2024. "The energy transition: A balancing act," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    11. Juliette Caucheteux & Sam Fankhauser & Sugandha Srivastav, 2025. "Climate Change Mitigation Policies for Developing Countries," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 69-89.
    12. Filewod, Ben & McCarney, Geoff, 2023. "Avoiding leakage from nature-based offsets by design," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117927, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Ovando, Paola & Castellazzi, Marie & Baggio-Compagnucci, Andrea & Hewitt, Richard J. & Gimona, Alessandro, 2025. "Feasibility of woodland expansion for carbon offsetting in Scotland revisited," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    14. Salvi, Antonio & Martielli, Francesco & Battisti, Enrico & Forliano, Canio & Kumar, Satish, 2025. "Climate change management and companies' financial performance: Exploring the moderating role of carbon credits," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    15. Berg, Florian & Ceccarelli, Marco & Heeb, Florian & Ivashchenko, Alexey & Rigobón, Roberto & Zwinkels, Remco C. J., 2025. "The market for voluntary carbon offsets," SAFE Working Paper Series 462, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    16. CHENG, Haitao & YANASE, Akihiko, 2025. "International Transfers of Green Technology and Carbon Mitigation Outcomes," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-154, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    17. Aliénor Cameron & Marc Baudry, 2023. "The case for carbon leakage and border adjustments: where do economists stand?," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 25(3), pages 435-469, July.
    18. Beck, Anne Helene & Pedraza, Alvaro, 2026. "Deep and Shallow Decarbonization in Supply Chains," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11306, The World Bank.
    19. Jaraitė, Jūratė & Kurtyka, Oliwia & Ollivier, Hélène, 2022. "Take a ride on the (not so) green side: How do CDM projects affect Indian manufacturing firms’ environmental performance?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • Q42 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Alternative Energy Sources
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04889783. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.