Are Carbon Offsets a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card?
Tags: Science, Sustainability, Climate Action, Business, Environmental Issues

So, what’s the problem?

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Over the past few years carbon offsets have become increasingly popular — and controversial.

Permanence

A significant portion of the criticism regarding offsetting is directed at reforestation/afforestation programs. While planting trees to combat climate change might seem like a great idea in theory, it’s not as efficient in practice.

For example, research has shown that a newly planted tree can take up to 20 years to capture the amount of CO2 offset programs promise. This means that over that 20-year period we would have to plant and protect an enormous amount of trees to offset just a fraction of GHG emissions. Even if we could do this, droughts, fires and deforestation could wipe our decades-long efforts in the span of a few short months.

Verifiability

A key concern for consumers and businesses investing in offsets is whether the projects they are funding are actually reducing carbon emissions.

Lisa Song and Paula Moura at ProPublica, a nonprofit organisation specialising in investigative journalism, analysed offset projects over the last two decades and found very few had delivered the benefits they promised. Using satellite imagery analysis for one particular preservation project beginning in 2013 they found that 4 years later only half of the project areas had been forested.

To illustrate further, Song and Moura use the example of a 2008 project designed to help Cambodian monks protect their local forests. On the outside, the project had all the markings of a success, including funding from the Clinton Foundation and the Cambodian government. However, the forest was subject to violent military border disputes between Cambodia and Thailand, logging approved by the very government that supported it and a wave of refugees from the former ‘Genocidal Regime’.

While the project was supposed to protect 13 sites and a total of 246 square miles, villages and military bases have now been built on the protected areas. With the help of satellite imagery analysis, ProPublica also found inaccuracies in reporting. Official documents from 2008 claimed that of the project areas, 88% were forested. The 2017 analysis found the actual number was closer to 46%. Similarly, the workers who were meant to provide regular updates on the project hadn’t presented a report in over 5 years.

Nevertheless, the 48,000 credits the project sold are still in the market.

Additionality

So far it seems like all of the criticism is directed at forestation efforts, but what about other types of projects?

Today, most of the top carbon offset programs have shifted to clean energy and efficiency projects. These are generally designed to produce more permanent benefits quicker than tree planting. Effectiveness is undeniably important, but it is not enough.

The main problem with the rise of energy projects is that it is almost impossible to prove additionality — that is, we can’t prove that the carbon savings would not have happened regardless of offsetting activities.

Additionality can be a hard concept to wrap your head around, so let’s use the example of efficient cookstoves in Kenya to explain. As we have already established, the project reduces emissions by decreasing deforestation and air pollution in Kenya. Does it exhibit additionality? Only if we could demonstrate that for the duration of the project the recipients of the cookstoves wouldn’t have gotten them anyway.

Clearly, this is not an easy thing to prove. It is a possibility that some of the recipients would have chosen to purchase the cookstove regardless of the project. Alternatively, the government might have established a program to distribute energy-efficient cookstoves if the project had not existed.

A ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card?

Even in cases where we can prove a project’s permanence, efficacy and — as far as it is possible — additionality, many people argue that offsetting is counterproductive to the fight against climate change. After all, if consumers and businesses can offset all their emissions by investing into far-away projects, what incentive is there to change?

Indeed, offsetting can set a dangerous precedent and allow us as a society to become complacent. In the end, offsets can be a slippery road to polluters getting a guilt-free pass to keep releasing GHGs into the atmosphere. If businesses and corporations feel like they are absolved of their environmental responsibilities, they are less likely to innovate and offer more climate-friendly products and services.