A new frontier in the voluntary carbon market: Old, leaky oil wells

Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Director Brad Handler contributed to this article about how over the last two years, developers have generated roughly 5 million carbon credits from cleaning up orphaned oil and gas wells.  If disused wells remain unplugged — the term of art for closing them up with concrete and remediating the environment around them — they can leach toxic chemicals and spew planet-warming methane into the air.  January 16, 2025.