Dr. Injy Johnstone

Articles in Refereed Journals

Lezak, Stephen; Zaman, Sharaban; Johnstone, Injy; Haya, Barbara (2026). UNFCCC Carbon Trading Could Undermine Global Climate Action, Nature Climate Change, 2026 (16), 8-9. DOI

• Recent United Nations policymaking on international emissions trading fails to reconcile longstanding flaws that could jeopardize the integrity of these programmes. We call for urgent action by policymakers to safeguard the future of the Paris Agreement.

Johnstone, Injy; Fuss, Sabine; Walsh, Nadine; Höglund, Robert (2026). Carbon Markets for Carbon Dioxide Removal, Climate Policy, 26 (1), 151-158. DOI

• Closing the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) gap requires significant capital deployment. Carbon markets – both compliance and voluntary forms – are a central tool to raise such investment. However, for them to do so efficiently requires understanding the current and future market dynamics: between CDR and other forms of emission reduction and avoidance projects, as well as between conventional and novel forms of CDR. This perspective article outlines current trends related to the role of CDR in the voluntary carbon market. It then builds on this by exploring future developmental pathways for CDR via the voluntary carbon market as well as emerging international and domestic compliance carbon market regimes. It shows that while the use of such market mechanisms to support CDR has thus far been comparatively limited, the fundamentals are there for them to be effective tools in scaling CDR in future. Further developments are however needed for them to be a successful diffuser of CDR in this regard.

Verbist, Flore; Schippers, Emma Jagu; Johnstone, Injy; Seralta, Coline; Presty, Romain; Theocharidou, Antigoni (2025). Market Mechanisms for Carbon Dioxide Removals: An Overview, Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports, 12. DOI

• Purpose of review Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is deemed critical to achieve the climate targets set by the Paris Agreement, underscoring the need for robust and scalable CDR markets. This review explores how CDR has been, and could increasingly be, integrated into existing and emerging carbon markets. Recent findings Despite growing policy attention, the deployment of CDR, especially permanent forms, remains marginal and challenging to scale within existing carbon pricing and crediting frameworks. Although certification schemes are becoming more tailored to the unique characteristics of different CDR approaches, cost disparities between permanent removal credits and cheaper emissions avoidance credits continue to hinder uptake. In response, several jurisdictions are exploring hybrid policy models that combine market-based mechanisms with public financial support. Additionally, increasing interlinkages between carbon market mechanisms are expected to facilitate more effective and widespread integration of CDR over time. Summary The report provides an overview of the role of CDR across three types of carbon market mechanisms: voluntary, quasi-compliance, and compliance-based systems. It highlights the defining features and interconnections among these markets, and assesses how each framework contributes to the deployment of removals, in particular novel CDR. While voluntary markets serve as innovation hubs for CDR, their limited scalability and voluntary nature highlight the importance of compliance markets and targeted policy support for permanent CDR. Those quasi-compliance and compliance markets, including mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and Emissions Trading Systems (ETS) like UK and EU ETS, are beginning to incorporate CDR more explicitly. This signals a shift toward broader carbon market integration and geographical coverage, requiring robust accounting and certification procedures for both emission reduction and removal projects.

Johnstone, Injy; Allen, Myles; Axelsson, Kaya; Caldecott, Ben; Eyre, Nick; Fankhauser, Samuel; Hale, Thomas; Hepburn, Cameron; Hickey, Conor; Jenkins, Stuart; Khosla, Radhika; Lezak, Stephen; Smith, Alison; Smith, Stephen; Wagner, Audrey (2025). The Revised Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting, Environmental Research Letters, 20 (9). DOI

Lamb, William F; Schleussner, Carl-Friedrich; Grassi, Giacomo; Smith, Stephen M; Gidden, Matthew J; Geden, Oliver; Runge-Metzger, Artur; Vaughan, Naomi E; Nemet, Gregory; Johnstone, Injy; Schulte, Ingrid; Minx, Jan C (2024). Countries Need to Provide Clarity on the Role of Carbon Dioxide Removal in Their Climate Pledges, Environmental Research Letters, 19 (12). DOI

Caldecott, Ben; Johnstone, Injy (2024). The Carbon Removal Budget: Theory and Practice, Carbon management, 15 (1). DOI

• Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a necessary complement to emissions reductions to achieve a state of global net zero emissions and stabilise future warming. Despite its utility, CDR remains poorly understood. Due to a range of constraints, CDR is a fundamentally finite resource, which we currently do not have enough of to achieve and go beyond global net zero. This has wide-ranging but underexplored implications for the technical and economic feasibility of our collective net zero transition. At the same time, both the opportunity and obligation to undertake CDR are not equally distributed amongst actors and geographies. As a result, there are ongoing questions as to how we can increase the supply of quality CDR whilst at the same time ensure equitable distribution of that same CDR, both within and between countries and non-state actors. To explore these phenomena, we introduce and define the concept of a Carbon Removal Budget (CRB), illustrate how it can apply to different contexts and scales, and distinguish it from the related but distinct concept of the carbon budget. We further estimate the global CRB, review its constraints and quality considerations and outline potential utilisation pathways and principles. We then examine the potential application of the CRB as a tool on which both public and private decision-makers can use to assess the feasibility of their nationally determined contributions and/or net-zero transition plans. In this manner, we illustrate how CRB forecasts can be used today to help build the net zero future of tomorrow.

Yang, Pu; Fankhauser, Sam; Smith, Stephen M; Sundvor, Ingrid; Hirmer, Stephanie; Johnstone, Injy; Stemmler, Joseph (2024). Policy Support for BECCS and DACCS in Europe: The View of Market Participants, Environmental Research Letters, 19 (9). DOI

• Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is the essential ‘net’ in net zero. However, a thriving CDR industry will not come into being without government intervention. As governments start to devise CDR support policies, this paper solicits the views of market participants in two of the most prominent CDR methods: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). We survey 47 BECCS and DACCS project developers and financiers active in Europe, conducting in-depth interviews with 27 of them to identify their key challenges and preferred policy interventions to address them. We find that participants prefer compliance markets, such as links to emissions trading systems, to generate demand but seek government support to cushion early market risks. They acknowledge the need for stringent monitoring and regulation to ensure environmental integrity. Bearing industry expectations in mind, policymakers face five key challenges in developing CDR: reaching scale, striking a balance with emissions cuts, safeguarding integrity, ensuring fairness and accelerating the speed of deployment.

Johnstone, Injy (2024). Energy Transition Governance in the ASEAN: Current Status and Future Prospects, Fulbright Review of Economics and Policy, 4 (2), 107-125. DOI

Johnstone, Injy (2023). 10. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Yearbook of International Environmental Law, 33 (1), 271-276. DOI

Johnstone, Injy (2023). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Yearbook of International Environmental Law, 34 (1). DOI

Johnstone, Injy (2022). SDG 13-Climate Action & Open Science: Accelerating Practices, Journal of Science Policy & Governance, 21 (2). DOI

• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and open science are symbiotic processes. No SDG reveals this connection more strongly than SDG 13-Climate Action. This perspective uses the SDGs as a lens to explore open science practices and prospects. It illustrates, through the concept of Net-Zero, how open science has been an accelerator of SDG 13-Climate Action. It also shows how open science can be further advanced in the context of SDG 13, discussing related SDGs such as Goal 9-Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; Goal 16-Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions; and Goal 17-Partnerships for the Goals. In these ways, this perspective describes opportunities for open science and SDG-Climate Action to support and accelerate one another.

Johnstone, Injy (2022). 10. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Yearbook of International Environmental Law, 32 (1), 284-289. DOI

Johnstone, Injy (2022). Global Governance and the Global Green New Deal: The G7’s Role, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9 (1). DOI

• Current headlines suggest that the world at large has missed the opportunity to ‘build back better’ from COVID-19 by way of a green recovery. However, such claims do not consider novel trends among plurilateral summit institutions, especially the extent to which global governance of a green recovery is encapsulated by the burgeoning norm bundle of the ‘Global Green New Deal’. Plurilateral summit institutions like the G20, G7 and the BRICS have the potential to play a key governance role in implementing a Global Green New Deal, given the breadth and depth of reform required to ‘build back better’ from COVID-19. This contribution adopts a practice-relationist methodology to explore this thesis. Green recovery practice is analysed through novel interrogation of the open-source stimulus spending data of the Global Recovery Observatory. The results reveal that the G7, the G20 and the BRICS are all funding proportionally more clean than dirty stimulus in response to COVID-19. However, the proportion of clean stimulus is much stronger among members of the G7. A relationist frame is then used to assess this practice against the potential norm entrepreneurship role of the G7, both as individual member states and as a collective. It concludes that although this norm entrepreneurship role is undoubtedly nascent, it yields valuable insights into the pathways and barriers for further norm diffusion of the Global Green New Deal among plurilateral summit institutions. In this way it highlights the unique role plurilateral summit institutions can play in not only globalising the green new deal, but crucially operationalising it. Thus, while the world may not yet be ‘building back better’ as a collective, it is institutional norm entrepreneurs who currently hold the blueprints.

Johnstone, Injy (2021). The G20, Climate Change and COVID-19: Critical Juncture or Critical Wound?, Fulbright Review of Economics and Policy, 1 (2), 227-245. DOI

Contributions to Collected Editions

Johnstone, Injy (2026). Universities as Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurs, in: Walter Leal Filho et al. (ed.), University Initiatives on Climate Change Education and Research, 3-20. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. DOI

• Net-Zero is a norm of the climate regime constructed by a range of state and nonstate actors. Universities are an important yet hitherto under-researched source of Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurship. This chapter provides insight into how universities can be considered Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurs. It illustrates how Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurship cuts across all three domains of a modern university: research, teaching, and its third mission of outreach and engagement. It also charts the Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurship universities demonstrate as implementers, epistemic contributors, and investors. It shows that as Net-Zero implementers, universities can drive normative momentum by setting Net-Zero targets, developing on-campus climate mitigation strategies, and joining broader climate coalitions. At the same time, universities’ teaching and research can greatly contribute to the knowledge base for the Net-Zero transition. Equally, as institutional investors, universities can take steps to align their endowments with the Paris Agreement and divest from fossil fuels. As specific case studies within each of these areas demonstrate, the practice of universities as Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurs remains highly varied. While there are clear hot spots of Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurship in the USA and UK, evidence suggests a trend to a more globalized practice over time. As a result, universities play an emerging yet vital role in supporting, researching, and investing in a Net-Zero future.

Johnstone, Injy (2026). Teaching Sustainable Finance Beyond the Business School: Creating a Tailored & Transformative Community of Practice in the Field of Carbon Markets, in: Sustainable Finance Education, London: Routledge, forthcoming.

Johnstone, Injy; Sheikh, H.; Kuci, S. (2026). Principles for Ensuring Quality and Integrity in Natural Capital Investments, in: Scaling Investments in Natural Capital, Berlin: Springer Nature, forthcoming.

Johnstone, Injy (2023). Nature-Based Solutions and the Voluntary Carbon Market: Opportunities and Limits, in: Walter Leal Filho, Gustavo J. Nagy, Desalegn Ayal (eds.), Handbook of Nature-Based Solutions to Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change, 1-23. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. DOI

• Nature-based solutions are central to climate change mitigation and adaptation, yet one has to be clear what problem(s) they provide the solution to. Examining this question helps reveal the opportunities and limits of market-based mechanisms as a facilitator of nature-based solutions. By way of a primer, it is necessary to understand the array of nature-based solutions that exist today. Here, a fundamental distinction between nature-based solutions that avoid, store, or remove emissions can and should be drawn. This distinction, in turn, helps reveal both the opportunities and limits of the voluntary carbon market as catalysts of nature-based solutions. Opportunities to expand the protection of a range of ecosystems could lead to significant climate and nature benefits. Yet currently, the unbridled and largely unregulated voluntary carbon market now evidences the inherent limits as a source of financing nature-based solutions. This is largely due to the proliferation of avoided emissions projects, many of which raise concerns from an additionality perspective and can create a number of perverse incentives for conservation. Rather than pitting carbon against nature and weakening both outcomes, this chapter explores how we must distinguish between nature-based solutions focusing on carbon removal and those which conserve and protect existing ecosystems. As part of this, it is necessary to assess the nuanced characteristics of nature-based solution projects to illustrate that while the goals of removing carbon and protecting nature are often interlinked, they are distinct. Consequently, they must be untangled from the perspective of the voluntary carbon market. Doing so offers the opportunity to better protect nature and the climate, through transparent markets to address externalities in each.

Further Publications, Press Articles, Interviews

Field, Ben; Coad, Lizzy; Johnstone, Injy; Yeh, Bee Hui; Kouvela, Anastasia (2025). Guidelines for Setting a Net Zero-Aligned Internal Carbon Price, Oxford.

• In the evolving landscape of corporate sustainability, internal carbon pricing has emerged as a pivotal instrument for driving decarbonisation and aligning business operations with global climate objectives. Setting an internal carbon price (ICP) involves assigning a monetary value to greenhouse gas emissions before they have been emitted, thereby internalising the external costs of carbon pollution. ICPs represent a shift toward a proactive strategy where carbon becomes a core business consideration rather than an afterthought, enabling it to genuinely shape strategic decision-making and lead to tangible emissions reductions.
• https://netzeroclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Guidelines-for-setting-a-net-zero-aligned-internal-carbon-price-20250910-1.pdf

Johnstone, Injy; Kuci, Sindi (2025). Article 6 at Bonn 2025: The Age of Operationalisation, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment 2025.

• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/news/article-6-bonn-2025-age-operationalisation

Johnstone, Injy; Schneider, Lambert; Michaelowa, Axel; de Grandpré, Juliette; Kuci, Sindi; Ahonen, Hanna-Mari; Probst, Benedict; Lezak, Stephen (2025). Oxford Principles for Responsible Engagement with Article 6. Oxford: University of Oxford, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/The_Oxford_Principles_for_Responsible_Engagement_with_Article_6.pdf

Johnstone, Injy; Pelz, Setu; Kuci, Sindi (2025). Towards a Net Zero Aligned Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, Smith School for Enterprise & the Environment Policy Briefing 2025.

• • The Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) is a new global carbon trading system that is designed to help both countries and corporates raise their climate ambition by financing projects in return for carbon credits, which they can claim towards their own targets or as a contribution to climate mitigation. • The PACM’s rules were designed to avoid flaws from earlier international carbon trading mechanisms which were alleged to have financed ‘hot air’ as opposed to real climate mitigation. However, in some important ways, the PACM could set a weaker climate standard than its predecessor under the Kyoto Protocol. • As a result, there is a risk that the mechanism could undermine the work needed to achieve global net zero, which requires us to remove all emissions we put into the atmosphere. Evidence from the first tranche of projects seeking to transition or be developed under the PACM confirms this risk. • For the PACM to help rather than hinder the delivery of net zero we recommend that separate targets to reduce and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere be initially adopted before transitioning the mechanism to one that finances only greenhouse gas removals, and ultimately to one that finances only permanent removals. In tandem, we recommend the Paris Agreement’s other financing levers be fully utilised to finance emission avoidance and reduction projects, as well as more temporary forms of carbon removal. • Considering the voluntary nature of the mechanism, PACM actors could choose to undertake such a transition themselves. Beyond this, the official review of the mechanism in 2028 will present a further opportunity for more structural reform. • Transitioning the PACM in the above way can encourage more effective use of all financing mechanisms under the Paris Agreement to deliver a net zero future. Placing constraints on the nature of credits traded via the PACM can also ramp up domestic mitigation efforts and help promote a rising tide of ambition across other carbon markets.
• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/Towards-a-Net-Zero-Aligned-Paris-Agreement-Crediting-Mechanism.pdf

Johnstone, Injy (2024). Article 6 in Focus: Outcomes from COP29, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment 2024.

• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/news/article-6-focus-outcomes-cop29

Johnstone, Injy (2024). Article 6 in Focus: Bottlenecks and Breakthroughs at Bonn 2024, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment 2024.

• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/news/article-6-focus-bottlenecks-and-breakthroughs-bonn-2024

Smith, Stephen M.; Geden, Oliver; Gidden, Matthew J.; Lambi, William F.; Minx, Jan C.; Buck, Holly; Burke, Josh; Cox, Emily; Edward, Morgan R.; Fuss, Sabine; Johnstone, Injy; Müller-Hansen, Finn; Pongratz, Julia; Probst, Benedict; Roex, Stephanie; Schenuit, Felix; Schulte, Ingrid; Vaughan, Naomi E. (2024). The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal 2024 - A Global, Independent Scientific Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Removal - 2nd Edition, 2024. DOI

Axelsson, Kaya; Wagner, Audrey; Johnstone, Injy; Allen, Myles; Caldecott, Ben; Eyre, Nick; Fankhauser, Sam; Hale, Thomas; Hepburn, Cameron; Hickey, Conor; Khosla, Radhika; Lezak, Stephen; Mitchell-Larson, Eli (2024). Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting (Revised 2024). Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford.: Oxford.

• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-02/Oxford-Principles-for-Net-Zero-Aligned-Carbon-Offsetting-revised-2024.pdf

Johnstone, Injy; Reséndiz, José Luis (2024). Article 6 in Focus: Outcomes from COP28, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment 2024.

• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/news/article-6-focus-outcomes-cop28

Sharma, Anjali; Firdaus, Nur; Johnstone, Injy (2023). Use Global Stocktake to Ensure Equitable Flow of Climate Finance, 2023.

• https://cgs.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/Policy%20Brief%20-%20Equity%20in%20Climate%20Finance.pdf

Johnstone, Injy (2023). De-Risking Net-Zero Through Offset Insurance: A Proposal, in: Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment Conference Papers 2023.

• Trust in offsets–and the entities that depend on them to make Net-Zero claims– is at an all-time low. Many offsets currently available on the voluntary carbon market have limited monitoring, reporting and verification procedures and, consequently, low to no environmental integrity. Yet few companies can afford to invest wholly in permanent removal-based offsets, despite this being best practice. To combat these issues, this paper proposes a novel ‘Offset Insurance Product’ (OIP). An OIP provides a stop-gap measure for Net-Zero claims, with a claim only being necessary should offsets not have covered residual emissions the year in question. In this situation, insurance is a useful tool given that permanent removal options cost significantly more but are the only way to verify that emissions removals (and consequent greenhouse gas effect) are neutralised in the near term. When insurers calculate the premium to be charged for an OIP, they factor in a company’s track record delivery on their Net-Zero plans, including the types of offsets they use to remove unavoidable emissions and the extent to which they build a buffer in the form of additional removals to make up for any risk of non-permanence. An OIP could reshape the risks and incentives actors face in the offsetting sector, enhancing the due diligence performed on offsetting projects and attracting more investment in removal based offsets in tandem. As re/insurers face significant losses caused and aggravated by climate change, they have a rational incentive to address it. The opportunity for value creation through an OIP has the potential to increase incentivisation even further. Governments, too, are pressed for ways to stimulate the alignment of financial flows with the Paris Agreement and achieve Net-Zero. As a result, an OIP stands to be a win on multiple fronts: insurers get to lessen their Scope 3 emissions and create stability for the permanent removals industry, companies are incentivised to reduce emissions, select high-quality credits and where they fail despite their best efforts, they have a safeguard against legal risks; developers of permanent removals get a degree of certainty in the near term supply, enabling them to scale operations; and finally regulators and the general public can have added surety on the feasibility of the ‘Net’ in Net-Zero. In these ways, OIP offers an example of the innovation needed for the industry to respond to both the environmental threat and economic opportunity climate change presents.
• https://sustainablefinancealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/421-updated.pdf
• Event: 6th Annual Conference, Yale University, 2023-08-23

Johnstone, Injy (2022). The Global Green New Deal: The New Norm?, Environmental Sciences Proceedings, 15 (1), 6. DOI

• The Global Green New Deal (GGND) has had a resurgence through calls for ‘building back better’ from COVID-19 by way of a green recovery. News headlines suggest that the world has, so far, missed this opportunity, yet close analysis of the data reveals a more subtle trend at play. An aggregate analysis of COVID-19 stimulus measures from the perspective of plurilateral summit institutions reveals that both the G7 and the BRICS countries have implemented a proportionally higher volume of clean versus dirty stimulus measures. This indicates that the GGND could indeed be ‘the new norm’ even as it continues its nascent emergence. However, a significant gap remains between the G7 and the BRICS countries in their respective proportions of clean versus dirty stimulus measures. Given the role of the same groupings as respective net carbon importers and net carbon exporters, there remains an ongoing risk of ‘carbon leakage’. In making this connection, this paper underscores the potentially crucial role that carbon border adjustment measures will play as the GGND continues to emerge as a possible ‘new norm’ of global governance.
• Event: 9th International Conference on Sustainable Development, Virtual, 20–21 September 2021, Virtual, 2021-09-20

Discussion Papers

Johnstone, Injy; Kuci, Sindi; Hale, Thomas; Gupta, Bhavya; Chawla, Varnika; Nicholas, Kenneth (2025). Roadmap to Net-Zero Aligned Carbon Market Regulation. Oxford: University of Oxford.

• Carbon markets are currently at a critical juncture. With over 80 emergent carbon pricing schemes around the globe and 106 carbon crediting policies, interest is growing in carbon market activities that can help reduce or remove emissions. There remains, however, uncertainty as to how countries can effectively manage the growing complexity and breadth of carbon credit transactions whilst ensuring they help rather than hinder the Paris Agreement goals. To date, carbon market regulation has emerged in an ad hoc manner, largely responding to integrity challenges, typically lacking harmonisation and integration with the wider regulatory and financial ecosystems it exists within. Similar to carbon markets themselves, such regulation is not net-zero aligned by default. If the system does not robustly differentiate between emissions reductions and removals, and the different incentives to develop them, carbon markets risk being blunt tools to deliver net-zero. To address these concerns and unlock the full potential of carbon markets in catalysing climate action, governments can design and implement robust regulatory frameworks to support both broader domestic climate and economic goals. To enable governments to effectively design and operationalise such regulatory frameworks, this working paper offers a “Roadmap to Net-Zero Aligned Carbon Market Regulation”. To build this Roadmap, we first categorise existing types of carbon market regulation, highlighting existing trends and gaps. We then conceptualise six key pillars undergirding effective carbon market regulation, including (i) efficient and effective financing; (ii) end state of net-zero; (iii) ecosystem integrity; (iv) equitable responsibilities and outcomes; (v) enforcement and oversight; and (vi) ease of use. We further recognise that whereas these principles can be universally applicable, their implementation will differ across jurisdictional contexts and specifically explore the pillars’ application across advanced, emerging, and developing economies. This illustrates that despite their different capacities and responsibilities for climate action, all jurisdictions seeking to engage with carbon markets can use the Roadmap to help to unlock the full climate and economic potential of net-zero aligned carbon markets in line with national priorities and realities.
• https://netzeroclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Roadmap-to-Net-Zero-Aligned-Carbon-Market-Regulation.pdf

Johnstone, Injy; Thyblad, Tomas; Brown, Mostyn (2025). Neutralisation Claims in the Era of Article 6, University of Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme Working Paper. Oxford: University of Oxford.

• Neutralisation of residual emissions is an indispensable component of a net zero aligned future. Fossil based emissions–which constitute the bulk of existing and planned residual emissions–can only be neutralised by permanent carbon dioxide removal (CDR). In this sense, neutralisation should be viewed as a form of waste disposal. Coordination of this atmospheric waste disposal is necessarily a cross-functional activity–with both governments and organisations alike possessing an obligation to ensure it occurs. It is also typically cross-border as permanent CDR involves capturing carbon from the atmosphere that could have been released anywhere on earth and restoring it to the geological carbon cycle in a fixed location. Action taken by organisations towards voluntary climate claims, paired with dynamic support measures from governments, have thus far been catalytic in driving the development of permanent CDR pathways. However, they have proved insufficient to provide the necessary scale. One issue holding back demand-side scaling is the uncertainty emerging from the operationalisation of Article 6 under the Paris Agreement, between corporate and country-based accounting ledgers. A source of uncertainty that arises within this context is the question over whether corresponding adjustments are needed for all types of mitigation outcomes acquired to support neutralisation pathways. Requiring corresponding adjustments for permanent CDR does not reflect its role on the path to and beyond net zero and can cause unintended consequences. Long-term certainty is needed now for corporates since the scaling of the CDR capacity is highly dependent on corporates’ willingness to enter into long term offtake agreements for future deliveries of CDR. To provide confidence in doing so, clarity is needed from governments and standard setters that corresponding adjustments are not needed for organisational neutralisation investments, provided that certain environmental integrity and accounting safeguards are met.
• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/Neutralisation_Claims_in_the_Era_of_Article_6_OxSFG_Working_Paper.pdf

Johnstone, Injy (2024). Investing in Carbon Removal: Levers for the Private Sector, University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment Working Paper, 24-1.

• Achieving and maintaining the global goal of net zero requires us to scale carbon removal significantly. Both public and private investment is needed for this task. Recent years have borne witness to a rapid growth in private sector investment in carbon removal, particularly novel technologies. While such interest has typically focused on the use of carbon removal for offsetting purposes, there is a far more diverse range of potential levers through which the private sector can both channel and benefit from carbon removal investment. On the supply side, the private sector can acquire carbon removal assets, invest in carbon removal entities, or integrate carbon removal into their own value chains. On the demand side, opportunities persist for the private sector to support carbon removal through market mechanisms and catalytic climate finance. Such opportunities must be considered against the backdrop of evolving dynamics affecting such investments including efforts to standardise quality, harmonise carbon markets, and the development of innovative products and services. This working paper aims to shed light on these investment levers and evolving dynamics: illustrating how private-sector investment can be channelled to grow the carbon removal “net” in net zero.
• https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-09/Investing-in-Carbon-Removal-Levers-for-the-Private-Sector.pdf

Sharma, Anjali; Johnstone, Injy; Firdaus, Nur (2023). Equity in Climate Financing: Spotlight on the Energy Transition. College Park, MD: Center for Global Sustainability, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland.

• https://cgs.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2023-12/Team%201_iGST%20Working%20Paper.pdf

Johnstone, Injy (2022). Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurship: Principles and Prospects in the U.S. DOI

• Net-Zero is the dominant paradigm through which much of the world’s climate mitigation efforts are now expressed. Many are familiar with countries setting Net-Zero targets, yet sub-national actors play a critical role too. The context of the United States (U.S.) stands testament to this. When the Trump Administration signaled its intention to leave the Paris Agreement in 2017, sub-national actors rapidly formed coalitions to declare that they were ‘still in’. Even after the Biden Administration re-joined the Paris Agreement, many sub-national actors continue to reinforce the normative momentum behind Net-Zero. In this sense, some are ‘Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurs’. This paper explores U.S. states, cities, tribal nations, businesses, and non-profits as Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurs. Through a combination of qualitative insights and case studies drawn from an analysis of close to 5000 entities, it maps the current swathe of each group’s practice and reveals distinctive hallmarks of sub-national Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurship. These hallmarks are important as they can inform processes of norm contestation. A prime example of Net-Zero norm contestation can be seen in the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission’s 2021 consultation on climate risk disclosure. By investigating sub-national actor inputs into this process, this paper explores Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurship in real-world practice. Within this context, it also assesses the role of Net-Zero Norm Antipreneurs who provide a countervailing force. Through this exercise, the paper distills principles of effective Net-Zero Norm Entrepreneurship and in turn, uses these to assess the prospects of Net-Zero as a source of new norms.