Carbon offsetting, aka polishing a turd

“We’re carbon neutral.”

“We’re climate positive.”

“We’re net zero.”

Three common sustainability claims from businesses that you should take with a pinch shitload of salt.

This week, I wanted to learn more about carbon offsetting. When I emerged from the rabbit hole, I’d concluded that offsetting in its current form – which lets companies hide their polluting skeletons behind carbon credits – is bollocks.

Here’s what I learnt:

What is carbon offsetting?

Carbon offsetting lets businesses compensate for their carbon emissions by investing in schemes and activities that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce emissions overall.

We know how to do this: Stop burning fossil fuels, curb over-consumption, quit our love affair with plastic, and restore and protect the world’s forests, oceans, and ecosystems.

Or there’s the easy, non-committal, lazy way preferred by big polluters: Buy carbon credits from dodgy schemes and carry on regardless.

What are carbon credits?

A company can apply for and sell carbon credits when it reduces or removes more carbon emissions from the atmosphere than it emits. 

One credit = one ton of carbon removed or prevented from being emitted.

These credits are then sold to other businesses, who can claim that they are carbon-neutral because they’ve palmed off the responsibility to someone else.

Some even use credits as an excuse to increase emissions.

And because there’s no market regulation or transparency around carbon credits, the market is growing rapidly, with plenty of charlatans coming out of the woodwork hoping to make a quick buck.

This means there are a LOT of dodgy credits for sale and few that are actually credible.

The great carbon con

Carbon credit initiatives are often run by companies that have their own agendas.

For example, let’s pretend Lumberjack Larry exists (apologies to any lumberjack who happened to be called Larry).

👇

• Lumberjack Larry owns a logging business.

• He marks off one stretch of the forest he’s currently decimating and promises to protect it and never to cut down the trees.

• Lumberjack Larry estimates that the protected area (which was never under threat to begin with) will absorb 20 tons of carbon (yes, that’s a random number I pulled out of my butt).

• He gets an auditor in. The auditor agrees with Larry on the amount of carbon the trees will absorb. He gives independent certifiers – like Verra – the green light to issue the credits on Lumberjack Larry’s behalf.

• The certifier registers the project on its database and sells the credits at a handsome profit to companies like Shell, Netflix, Disney, Samsung, and Chevron (all of which have bought carbon credits).

• Those credits give them a hall pass to claim they have offset their emissions when they’ve done sweet bugger all. It’s the ultimate PR for polluters.

Spoiler alert: Lumberjack Larry cuts down the trees anyway. 

Some companies - and airlines are particularly bad - pass the cost on to their customers by appealing to their eco-conscious values.

For an extra fee, airlines including Air France, Air New Zealand, American Airlines, British Airways, and Delta will “offset” your flight. You think you’re doing right by the climate in paying the surcharge when you’re really making it worse (unless the airlines are actually doing something like switching to biofuel).

A recent investigation found that only 6% of the total forest credits issued by Verra, the world’s largest carbon credit certifier, achieved real emissions reductions. Only eight of the 29 assessed projects reduced emissions at all. And most of them exaggerated deforestation efforts by an average of 406%. This means that 94% of Verra's 95 million forest carbon credits are (potentially) worthless junk. 

And then there’s the fact that tree planting and reforestation are not the best ways to offset emissions, but that’s a rant for another day.

Get out of jail free card

Offsetting does not deliver what the world needs – a gargantuan drop in carbon emissions. It’s doing the opposite.

And buying carbon credits doesn’t prove that a business is sustainable or that it’s making meaningful changes to reduce emissions.

Instead of providing solutions to the climate crisis, the companies that buy the credits are fuelling an industry that’s fast becoming part of the problem.

For a price, they can pretend to be carbon neutral and continue to pollute willy-nilly while feeding a dodgy new get-rich-quick market.

You can polish a turd, but it still smells like shit.

When a business says it wants to “be net zero by 2030”, we need to ask how.

Has it implemented a realistic plan to reduce emissions, or is it just buying credits to distract the public from the fact that it’s continuing its unsustainable behaviour and even increasing emissions?

Carbon offsetting should be a small part of a workable net zero strategy. 

It should be a temporary or last resort to offset emissions that the business cannot reduce through changes – up to 10% of total emissions, according to the Science-Based Target Initiative.

The bigger focus should be on finding opportunities to reduce carbon production in business operations, for example, by installing solar panels, shifting to remote working, or switching to compostable packaging.

They should be figuring out how to prevent emissions from entering the atmosphere in the first place and make up for the damage they’ve already done.

Instead, companies keep putting more plasters on a festering wound that keeps bleeding through.

The goal should be to remove, not offset.

Rather than buying credits, businesses should invest the money into projects that align with their purpose and will result in real, measurable change.

We can’t take companies’ word that they’re “carbon neutral”, “climate positive”, or “net zero”. We must criticise those statements and start seeing the wood for the trees.

Because there’s no easy way out of this. We can’t buy ourselves out of the climate crisis. And nature should not be for sale.

Next week: Offsetting’s evil sister: Insetting.

— Tarryn ✌️

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This week's climate and sustainability news worth noting

🌵 After three years of a La Niña weather event, the World Meteorological Organization has warned that an El Niño event may develop in the coming months, bringing warmer temperatures and risks of drought for many regions.

🇦🇺 From April, rooftop solar power will overtake coal to become Australia’s largest power generation source. The country currently leads the world in solar uptake, with over 3.4 million solar power systems installed on Australian households and businesses. Tesla has singled out South Australia as a "benchmark" for the world when it comes to solar energy. The state recently opened the first 12 of its 140 proposed electric car-charging sites with a combined 59 charging stations.

☀️ The United Nations says it might be time to begin studying technologies that reflect sunlight away from the Earth to cool it down temporarily. It's a desperate attempt to reduce emissions since global efforts to respond to climate change are insufficient and not on track to meet the 1.5C Paris Agreement goal.

🏭 Global CO2 emissions rose to a record last year as the world continues to burn fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency says the biggest increase came from Asia's emerging markets.

⚡️ Elon Musk revealed Tesla's third Master Plan, in which the company will lead the global effort to eliminate fossil fuels and convert the world to sustainable energy. Master Plan 3 includes adding renewable power to the existing grid, producing more electric vehicles, installing heat pumps in homes and buildings, using high-temperature heat delivery and hydrogen for industrial applications, and building sustainably fuelled planes and boats. Read the Master Plan 3 Twitter thread here.

And in business news:

📊 Docket is a new, free tool that helps SMEs measure and improve their sustainability. Although created for the New Zealand market through a public-private partnership, I believe the tools and resources will help any business anywhere measure their effect on the environment and learn how to reduce it. Did I mention that it's free?

🤥 A draft European Union directive has been leaked that will give companies 10 days to justify green claims about their products or face “effective, proportionate, and dissuasive” penalties. Due in March, the new law aims to fight greenwashing and clean up the environmental claims marketplace. Meanwhile, the British Standards Institution has revealed the Sustainable Finance Standard (BS ISO 32210:2022) to help financial organisations avoid greenwashing through the setting of credible ESG plans and credible targets. And, in Australia, a survey of 247 businesses found that 57% had promoted "concerning claims" about their environmental credentials, prompting a crackdown from the competition watchdog.

♻️ The Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (pEPR) law has been enforced in the UK. Under the new legislation, businesses that supply household packaging will be responsible for the costs of dealing with packaging waste. This will hopefully encourage producers to reduce the amount of packaging they use and to improve the recyclability of their packaging.

❌ Dozens of asset managers – including BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and Fidelity – have received low scores in an analysis of ESG practices in the sector. ShareAction's 'The Point of No Returns' report paints a picture of weak progress across the board. Two-thirds of the 77 companies assessed fail to meet basic criteria and have "serious gaps" in areas including governance and stewardship, the strength of their policies, and the extent of their impact on climate change, biodiversity, and society.

🚕 Uber has challenged 50 Australians to give up their private cars for a month and use app-based travel, walking, and public transport. It's part of Uber's "One Less Car" trial, which aims to reduce over-reliance on private cars. Participants in the trial will be given $1,300 in Uber credit that they can spend on a range of transport options.

Well, that's interesting

Scientists have created a high-resolution computer simulation of the past 100 million years of Earth's structural changes. In unprecedented detail, it reveals how Earth’s surface has changed over time.Take a look:

I'll leave you on this happy note...

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