Capgemini wants mandatory carbon offset framework, director says

Quantum Commodity Intelligence - Capgemini wants a standardised, mandatory carbon crediting framework for the voluntary carbon market under the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a sustainability director at the French consultancy said.

Capgemini, which has a wide network of contacts among French corporates and policymakers, wants the arbiter to establish a compulsory standardised carbon offsetting framework, according to Gabrielle Desarnaud, Director of Sustainable Development at Capgemini.

"Prior to going to this event, I just had a talk with our CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] team, and our Chief Officer [Sarika Naik] just told me what we need is a mandatory framework," Desarnaud said while speaking at a panel at Gold Standard's climate conference Thursday.

"Offsetting, buying carbon credits, supporting those kinds of projects, under the SBTi, under that kind of framework, should be mandatory and with very clear minimum standards about what is a high-integrity carbon credit."

"This is the point of view of Capgemini," Desarnaud said.

Capgemini has set a goal of reducing its Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 90% by 2040 versus 2019 emissions, with carbon credits used to offset the remaining 2040 and is aligned with the SBTi.

Just yesterday, US-based non-profit RMI along with a group of working professionals, released a joint position on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in response to the SBTi draft Corporate Net-Zero Standard v2.

The collaborative statement aimed to inform revisions to the standard by outlining six key recommendations, including but not limited to companies adopting gradually increasing annual CDR procurement targets, rather than cumulative ones, to create consistent market demand.

The consultation for SBTi's draft Corporate Net-Zero Standard v2 was open from March to June this year.

The standard focused on emissions reduction, while exploring ways to incentivise the scaling of CDR and climate finance, as well as looking at how to deal with barriers to addressing "challenging" Scope 3 value-chain emissions.  

Scope 3 emissions refer to indirect emissions that occur across a company's value chain but account for more than 90% of emissions in big agriculture.

Update: This article has been updated with additional quotes from Gabrielle Desarnaud, Director of Sustainable Development at Capgemini. The headline and first paragraph have also been updated to clarify the attribution to Desarnaud.