Following on from Jérôme Boutang and Francis Charpentier’s article in this issue presenting the Carbon Cumulative Accounting method (CCA), we publish a complementary article by Jérôme Cazes demonstrating how these forms of accounting can help to induce economic actors to reduce their emissions and move towards achieving the objectives of decarbonization or ‘Net Zero’. On the one hand, the information that comes out of these accounting procedures ought, in his view, to increase the efficiency of the environmental competition between economic actors and induce them consciously to reduce their impact in terms of emissions. On the other hand, this cumulative approach facilitates part of the accounting of environmental impact and, in turn, simplifies the remaining calculations needed to fine-tune the information. He explains this by reviewing the history of carbon-impact accounting over the past 30 years, illustrating this with several macro- and microeconomic examples (national carbon accounts, bottom‑up accounting, CCA etc.). And he complements this with an analysis of how the carbon impact of financial products is taken into consideration, together with the human impact on natural carbon capture, through dual tracking of production flows (in monetary terms, in carbon terms, and in terms of the trade-offs made between the two). In Cazes’s view, these various instruments in the service of Net Zero could be decisive in bringing about virtuous environmental competition, leading companies to reduce their carbon footprint through orthodox market mechanisms. And, as he sees it, Europe, a pioneering player in this field, is best placed to encourage their more widespread adoption.
The article is downloadable only in French. It is not available in English.
