Additionality
Criterion assessing whether a climate financing or action produces a real effect that would not have occurred without it.
Additionality is the criterion that assesses whether a climate action or financing produces a real environmental benefit that would not have occurred without that intervention. The concept is central to the credibility of carbon credits, green bonds and transition plans: financing a project that would have happened anyway brings no additional emission reduction, even if it is labeled green. Assessing additionality requires constructing a counterfactual scenario, an inherently contestable exercise since it concerns what did not happen. For the sustainable finance sector, the absence of additionality is one of the main vectors of greenwashing: an actor can display a high volume of green financing with no marginal climate effect. Rigor on additionality distinguishes a substantive transition plan from an accounting repositioning of already-aligned assets.
Hypothetical case: a carbon credit funding the preservation of a forest that was not under threat fails the additionality test and brings no real emission reduction.
additionality, carbon additionality
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