Gautam Jain and Ned Shell on the Promise of Carbon Credit Markets

Columbia Energy Exchange · Oct 6, 2026 · 49m · transcript

Carbon credit markets have become one of the most hotly debated tools in the fight against climate change. Supporters call them essential to closing the gap between corporate climate pledges and what companies can actually achieve on their own. Critics call them a shell game that lets polluters buy their way out of real action.

But the debate is about more than just whether carbon credits can work; it's about the integrity of the markets designed to trade them. The promise of these markets is fairly straightforward. The complexity comes in determining whether the credits actually deliver the…