One of the first “wins” of this year’s conference has been approval of Article 6 trading of carbon credits. Whether this takes off, as the jets leave Baku, is something well worth watching.

Despite all the focus on “mitigation” of our carbon emissions, the 2008 Climate Change Act gave space for the UK to use carbon credits to supplement our own reductions. Now I know some people don’t want to talk about this – they would prefer us to share more pain to make hitting the target so much more worthwhile, but the masochists aside, could carbon credits – investing overseas to help carbon reductions elsewhere – actually work for the UK?

Taking some rough numbers, applying the current cost of carbon that is traded (£85/tonne) to domestic heat carbon emissions, would raise between £4-5 billion. That money would go towards financing carbon reduction schemes in poorer countries. Given it’s a global problem, the carbon reduction bit makes sense. But is it “additional” I hear the sceptics shout? Well, if you are a poorer nation, affording carbon reductions while trying to grow economically is a major problem. Providing the funding, I would argue, is by definition “additional” – that is to say a net gain over what can be delivered.

Also coming out of COP29 last week was a  report by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, who warned that poor countries will need $1 trillion a year by 2030 to help them tackle climate change. Using the UK’s one per cent of global emissions as the basis for sharing out that cost, it works out at £8 billion a year. So that domestic carbon levy goes some way to meeting the UK’s contribution. For the consumer, it’s about £200 a year on the average gas bill – not to be taken lightly – but energy efficiency improvements could reduce this, as could biomethane injected into the gas networks and hydrogen blending. But for the consumer, it might be a way of avoiding the large upfront cost of certain low carbon technologies. Worth thinking about?