The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting (revised 2024) outline four principles and updated guidance for organisations and standard bodies involved in offsetting practices. The principles emphasise the need to reduce emissions urgently, increase transparency, and integrity in projects. The updated addition to the document distinguishes between ‘offsets’, ‘credits’, and ‘projects’ providing clarity on definitions.

The four principles are as follows:

• Prioritise emissions reduction: Organizations with net-zero commitments need to prioritise early investment in renewable energy and improved energy efficiency within their own value chains. They should aim to minimise the need for offsetting to reduce emissions based on best practices developed over the last decade.
• Ensure the environmental integrity of credits used to achieve net-zero: Carbon credits must be measured, reported, verified and retired properly to ensure that they can actually help achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by mid-century.
• Use high-integrity carbon removal projects only: Organisations should make sure that their carbon offsetting strategy transitions toward a state compatible with a net-zero future. The vast majority of credit issuances and retirements in voluntary carbon markets consist of carbon projects and do not actually address the drivers and impacts of climate change.
• Support the development of innovative and integrated approaches to achieving net-zero: Organisations adopting these principles have an opportunity to be more proactive than simply signalling demand by forming sector-specific alliances to work collaboratively with industry peers to develop the market for projects aligned with net-zero. They should support the protection and restoration of a wide range of ecosystems in their own right. Finally, they should adopt and publicise the principles and incorporate them into regulation and standard-setting for net-zero.

Recommendations

Organisations and standard-setting bodies should use the Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting to align their decarbonisation plans, increase the quality of standards, and guide policies that will ensure the success of initiatives aligned with the Paris Agreement.

Key takeaways

The revised document reflects current international guidance and highlights the urgency in reducing emissions within the value chain. It provides infrastructure for investment in high-quality credits that generate extra emissions reductions. The document includes guidance on compensating for residual emissions after reducing as much as possible.