Technology and innovation are essential elements to tackle climate change, but they are not always accessible or available. Besides these, a more immediate option is embodied by Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) which represent one of the largest, fastest growing and readily available possibility to tackle the increase of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Indeed, they are demonstrated to have the potential to deliver around one third of the total mitigations needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals by 2030. In particular, this set of practices aims at increasing the carbon storage and avoiding greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, NCS enhance the resilience and adaptation capacity of the ecosystems, providing positive benefits to human well-being and biodiversity. By doing so, NCS credits provide a valuable option to compensate "hard-to-abate" emissions while technology advances toward their direct reduction. Considering that about 29% of the total CO2 emissions are absorbed by soil and vegetation each year, special attention should be put on Natural Climate Solutions that focus on the protection of forests encouraging the achievement of the global objective of halting climate change.
Indeed, this is the case of results-based payments of the REDD± (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) scheme created by the UNFCCC with the goal of incentivizing forest conservation and improving land-use management. Being the REDD± implementation financially demanding and considering the scarce availability of public resources in the countries involved, the engagement of the private sector is deemed fundamental. That is, synergies resulting from public-private partnerships allow to realize the full potential of NCS, advancing both the development of the communities involved and the goal of emissions compensation.
Against this background, an integrated energy transition plan should include not only activities to maximize the efficiency and direct emission reduction through a lower carbon portfolio, but also the development of forestry carbon projects to compensate the hard-to-abate emissions. To this purpose, Eni's mission and business model is shaped to combine economic, social and environmental sustainability to tackle climate change and support the achievement of the SDGs. The credits generated through REDD± projects will allow Eni to reach the ambitious goal of compensating more than 6MTPA of CO2 by 2024 and more than 40MTPA by 2050.
