Science Wednesday: how to buy your carbon

In this Wednesday’s video, CSIRO economist David Evans from the Digiscape “Carbon” project uses agent-based modelling to explore how to run auctions to purchase greenhouse gas mitigation from landholders.

Some key takeaways:

• The kind of auction the purchaser should offer depends on how many auction rounds you expect to run: after enough auctions, sellers learn to pad their price unless the auction rules prevent them
• Renting, rather than buying, carbon offsets could help bring more participants into carbon markets
• Once co-benefits such as biodiversity come into play, a more complicated auction that allows conditional bids works well