The Kyoto Protocol was a binding worldwide action plan on global warming, which established legally binding greenhouse gas emission targets for individual countries. Under the Protocol, countries could set up national programmes for emission trading, such as carbon credits. They were created to promote, and compensate for the extra costs of, the use of carbon-reducing technologies. A carbon credit is a generic term for any financial tradable certificate representing the removal of 1 tonne of CO_2 or the mass of another greenhouse gas with a CO_2 equivalent of 1 tonne, from the atmosphere. Carbon credits can originate from a range of emission reducing activities, and these are calculated by what are called methodologies. They can be traded on the carbon markets in the same way as stocks and shares.
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