Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Carbon markets sound tidy in theory. In practice, they force a much messier question.
When internal decarbonisation gets too expensive or technically impossible, what counts as real climate action?
I’m Tom Raftery, and my guest here is Dr Jennifer Jenkins, Chief Science Officer at Rubicon Carbon. Jennifer sits right in the middle of one of the most contested corners of climate tech and net zero strategy: voluntary carbon markets. Her job is to think hard about quality, integrity, MRV, additionality, and what separates credible climate finance from the kind of accounting sleight of hand that has given this market such a rough reputation.
This matters now because companies are under pressure from every direction at once. They need to cut emissions. They need to stay competitive. They need to respond to tighter scrutiny on climate claims. And they need to do all that while technologies, standards, and policy frameworks are still shifting beneath their feet. Add in rising interest in CBAM, growing overlap between voluntary and compliance markets, and tighter supply of high-integrity credits, and this stops being a niche debate very quickly.
What changed my thinking here was not some grand claim that carbon markets will save the day. Quite the opposite. Jennifer’s most useful argument is that these markets are really about what happens when internal abatement hits a wall. That is a far more grounded frame. We also get into why high-quality supply may be much tighter than most buyers realise, why players like Microsoft are signing long-term offtake deals, and why price is increasingly tracking quality rather than simply volume. That last point matters. Cheap credits may not be cheap if they fail the credibility test.
We also dig into additionality in plain English, including why a credit can look valid one year and much less convincing the next if regulation changes. And there’s a practical discussion on AI in MRV and verification, where the real bottleneck may be less about ideology and more about slow, fragmented validation processes.
This is not a silver-bullet pitch for carbon credits, and it is not hand-waving green marketing.
This is for senior business leaders, climate professionals, policymakers, investors, and technologists trying to cut emissions without kidding themselves about the trade-offs.
If you’re working on this in the real world, I’d be interested in your perspective.
Climate Confident podcast: climateconfidentpodcast.com
Follow Climate Confident for weekly episodes on climate, energy, policy, and deployment.
Subscribe for more grounded analysis on decarbonisation, climate tech, and the energy transition.
💡 Chapters / Timestamps
00:00 – Why emissions cuts stall when internal abatement gets too expensive
00:00:32 – Why Rubicon Carbon believes markets can close the gap
00:02:22 – The cost curve problem inside corporate decarbonisation
00:04:28 – Carbon markets as outsourced mitigation
00:06:03 – What reputational damage actually broke in voluntary carbon markets
00:09:48 – What makes a high-quality carbon credit credible
00:11:24 – Additionality, methane, and why regulation changes the maths
00:14:38 – Why Microsoft and others are locking up future carbon supply
00:18:31 – AI, MRV, and the fragmented verification bottleneck
00:19:44 – Why voluntary and compliance carbon markets are starting to converge
00:23:24 – What this market needs next: standards, interoperability, insurance
00:27:17 – Lightning round: methane, timing, standards, and scale
Carbon markets sound tidy in theory. In practice, they force a much messier question.
When internal decarbonisation gets too expensive or technically impossible, what counts as real climate action?
I’m Tom Raftery, and my guest here is Dr Jennifer Jenkins, Chief Science Officer at Rubicon Carbon. Jennifer sits right in the middle of one of the most contested corners of climate tech and net zero strategy: voluntary carbon markets. Her job is to think hard about quality, integrity, MRV, additionality, and what separates credible climate finance from the kind of accounting sleight of hand that has given this market such a rough reputation.
This matters now because companies are under pressure from every direction at once. They need to cut emissions. They need to stay competitive. They need to respond to tighter scrutiny on climate claims. And they need to do all that while technologies, standards, and policy frameworks are still shifting beneath their feet. Add in rising interest in CBAM, growing overlap between voluntary and compliance markets, and tighter supply of high-integrity credits, and this stops being a niche debate very quickly.
What changed my thinking here was not some grand claim that carbon markets will save the day. Quite the opposite. Jennifer’s most useful argument is that these markets are really about what happens when internal abatement hits a wall. That is a far more grounded frame. We also get into why high-quality supply may be much tighter than most buyers realise, why players like Microsoft are signing long-term offtake deals, and why price is increasingly tracking quality rather than simply volume. That last point matters. Cheap credits may not be cheap if they fail the credibility test.
We also dig into additionality in plain English, including why a credit can look valid one year and much less convincing the next if regulation changes. And there’s a practical discussion on AI in MRV and verification, where the real bottleneck may be less about ideology and more about slow, fragmented validation processes.
This is not a silver-bullet pitch for carbon credits, and it is not hand-waving green marketing.
This is for senior business leaders, climate professionals, policymakers, investors, and technologists trying to cut emissions without kidding themselves about the trade-offs.
If you’re working on this in the real world, I’d be interested in your perspective.
Climate Confident podcast: climateconfidentpodcast.com
Follow Climate Confident for weekly episodes on climate, energy, policy, and deployment.
Subscribe for more grounded analysis on decarbonisation, climate tech, and the energy transition.
💡 Chapters / Timestamps
00:00 – Why emissions cuts stall when internal abatement gets too expensive
00:00:32 – Why Rubicon Carbon believes markets can close the gap
00:02:22 – The cost curve problem inside corporate decarbonisation
00:04:28 – Carbon markets as outsourced mitigation
00:06:03 – What reputational damage actually broke in voluntary carbon markets
00:09:48 – What makes a high-quality carbon credit credible
00:11:24 – Additionality, methane, and why regulation changes the maths
00:14:38 – Why Microsoft and others are locking up future carbon supply
00:18:31 – AI, MRV, and the fragmented verification bottleneck
00:19:44 – Why voluntary and compliance carbon markets are starting to converge
00:23:24 – What this market needs next: standards, interoperability, insurance
00:27:17 – Lightning round: methane, timing, standards, and scale
