NEW YORK, Oct 7 (Reuters) - It is time to get professional and give governments a role regulating voluntary carbon markets and corporate climate targets, the chief executive of the grant-giving Bezos Earth Fund told the Reuters Impact conference on Monday.

Trading in voluntary carbon credits, a relatively new and unregulated instrument generated by projects that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which companies can then buy to off-set their own environmental footprints, has shrunk as studies found some of those projects were not effective.

Companies, investors and activists are debating whether those credits should count towards "net-zero" targets which proliferated after the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Andrew Steer, head of the $10 billion Earth Fund set up with the personal fortune of Amazon (AMZN.O) , opens new tab founder Jeff Bezos to invest in tackling climate change this decade, told the conference there was not much time left to make those markets more efficient.

Steer listed a number of "self-appointed" voluntary groups which had contributed in the past 15 years to corporate climate efforts. These included emissions reporting platform CDP, and the World Resources Institute research organization, which he personally headed for several years and said he was proud to have been part of.

"It's time for moving on, I was going to say to the adults coming into the room, that's not fair because the NGOs are pretty good too. It's now time to get truly professional and regulated in the best sense," Steer said.

The Earth fund was an early backer of the Science-Based Targets initiative, a non-profit group now used by over 6,000 companies to audit their climate targets. SBTi said this year that offsets were largely ineffective, but delayed until 2025 a final decision on whether to approve companies' using them.

Biden administration officials wrote rules on carbon credits earlier this year, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission set guidelines for trading derivative contracts last month.

Steer also mentioned new laws in California which will oblige companies to account for emissions starting in 2026.

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https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/reuters-impact-it-is-time-carbon-markets-got-professional-bezos-earth-fund-ceo-2024-10-07/