We analyze current approaches to carbon accounting for removed carbon sold on carbon markets, focusing on carbon crediting under the framing of a remaining carbon budget, the issue of durability, and approaches to accounting methodologies. We explore the topic of mixing carbon with other problems in developing carbon accounting methodologies and highlight the open policy questions. We conclude with a suggested framework for accounting for carbon removal accounting that simplifies climate action and enables a world with negative carbon emissions.

This document details a conceptual Framework for the Certification of Carbon Sequestration (FCCS). It is based on a system designed to support negative emissions. It provides the minimum requirements for the development of carbon sequestration standards and certificates of carbon sequestration. It allows the certification of standards so that they in turn produce certification of removed carbon that authenticates durability and verifiability. The framework (i) identifies an organizational structure for the certification system, (ii) clarifies the responsibility of participating entities, (iii) provides certificate designs and usages, (iv) details the requirements to develop measurement protocols, (v) provides mechanisms to support a long-term industry, and (vi) outlines a vision towards durable storage.

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is essential to meet the Paris Agreement’s commitment to stay below a 1.5 degrees Celsius average temperature increase. To provide critical foundational support to the development, deployment, and scaling of CDR, certification of carbon removal is needed. The international community is developing rules for the functioning of carbon markets. To support that process, we explored open questions on four key themes in the development of standards and certification of carbon removal through an international multi-stakeholder consultation process hosted by the Global Carbon Removal Partnership, Arizona State University, and Conservation International. Categories of stakeholders included standard developing organizations, non-governmental organizations, governments, and academics. Discussions covered 1. the treatment of emission reduction, avoidance,and removal in certification, 2. the role of additionality in carbon removal, 3. the choice of certification instrument for carbon removal, and 4. the treatment of durability in certification. They revealed fundamental differences in viewpoints on how certification should work. We highlight areas of further exploration, concluding that providing transparency on assumptions made at the certification level will be crucial to progress and, eventually, the acceptance and success of carbon removal as a climate solution.

Resilient infrastructure research has produced a myriad of conflicting definitions and analytic frameworks, highlighting the difficulty of creating a foundational theory that informs disciplines as diverse as business, engineering, ecology, and disaster risk reduction. Nevertheless, there is growing agreement that resilience is a desirable property for infrastructure systems – i.e., that more resilience is always better. Unfortunately, this view ignore that the fact that a single concept of resilience is insufficient to ensure effective performance under diverse and volatile stresses. Scholarship in resilience engineering has identified at least four irreducible resilience concepts, including: rebound, robustness, graceful extensibility, and sustained adaptability.

In this paper, we clarify the meaning of the word resilience and its use, explain the advantages of the pluralistic approach to advancing resilience theory, and clarify two of the four conceptual understandings: robustness and graceful extensibility. Furthermore, we draw upon examples in electric power, transportation, and water systems that illustrate positive and negative cases of resilience in infrastructure management and crisis response. The following conclusions result:

1. Robustness and graceful extensibility are different strategies for resilience that draw upon different system characteristics.
2. Neither robustness nor extensibility can prevent all hazards.
3. While systems can perform both strategies simultaneously, their drawbacks are different.

Robust infrastructure systems fail when policies and procedures become stale, or when faced with overwhelming surprise. Extensible systems fail when a lack of coordination or exhaustion of resources results from decompensation. Consequently, resilience is found neither only in robustness, nor only in extensibility, but in the capacity apply both and switch between them at will.