Carbon offsetting: a credible tool to reach zero net emissions?
By Tara Dastmalchian
It almost sounds too good to be true – For around 40 dkk I can offset the carbon emissions of my flight from Copenhagen to my parents’ place in Hamburg [1]. Some airlines even offer to pay this offset for me, allowing me to travel comfortably within 30 minutes to my home city - apparently without having to feel bad about my carbon footprint for this climate unfriendly short-distance flight.
Recently, I have seen the terms carbon offsetting or carbon compensating pop up more and more. They can be found in sustainability reports from various companies, as an add-on for bookings of diverse forms of transportation, or even as an add-on to compensate for the consumed meat in some restaurants. Carbon offsetting and compensating seem like easy tools for customers and companies to minimise their carbon footprint and come closer to their goal of net-zero-emissions. Both terms describe the same concept. By investing in projects which either reduce or absorb carbon, individuals and companies can equal out the carbon emissions of their purchases or business activities.
But can reducing one’s carbon footprint be that easy? Often, I have wondered whether carbon offsetting sounds too good to be true. What exactly are those projects that are supposed to equal out my flight emissions? Do they actually successfully remove my carbon emissions? And is carbon offsetting such a brilliant one-size-fits-all solution, or are there differences and possible problems one should be aware of?
For those of you who have asked themselves similar questions when getting offered to offset or compensate, I will provide a quick overview of the most prominent carbon offsetting projects to help you evaluate the effect, possibilities, and limitations of carbon offsetting:
Reforestation
Reforestation is probably the most known practice for carbon offsetting via absorption. The main concept behind it is simple. New trees get planted in areas that previously contained forest. While the trees grow, they capture carbon dioxide and store it in their biomass and in the soil. Besides capturing carbon, reforestation can have positive side effects such as increasing the local soil quality, improving local livelihood, and recreating water cycles [2].
However, carbon absorption by forestation has its limitations and, depending on the project, can even have negative side effects. Trees can take more than 20 years to capture the carbon they are promised to offset. Newly planted trees can therefore play only a limited role in cutting our emissions by 45% before 2030 [3]. Moreover, the stored carbon might get emitted back to the atmosphere as soon as the trees get cut or burned down. Yet, only few providers can guarantee to protect their newly planted trees for a long time to ensure permanent carbon removal, as the future market for carbon offsetting is still uncertain [4].
Besides this limitation, an improper conduction of forestation can even cause harm for the local environment. Planted monocultures can reduce local biodiversity, the plantation of foreign trees can require more water than locally available, and the high bargaining power of offsetting firms has previously suppressed local farmers which resulted in local food scarcity [5]. The impact of forestation projects can therefore vary greatly regarding its local impact and its carbon capturing capacities.
Energy efficient cooking stoves
Due to increasing awareness of the downsides of reforestation, many offsetting providers now primarily focus on investing in carbon reducing projects. Other than carbon absorbing programmes, carbon reducing programmes do not aim to deduct carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Instead, other activities which emit carbon to the atmosphere get reduced to equal out the own emitted carbon. One commonly supported type of carbon reducing projects is the investment in energy efficient cooking stoves in Africa or India, where locals previously cooked with wood burning stoves. To fuel these wood burning stoves, the local population relies primarily on wood from nearby forests, a practice that results in deforestation, high carbon emissions and negative health implications for people inhaling the smoke. By replacing the wood burning stoves with 80% more efficient wood burners or gas stoves the deforestation can be limited and emissions substantially reduced [6].
But as every foreign aid programme, investing in energy efficient cooking stoves is far from an easy solution and its impact very project dependent. Projects without high involvement of the local population for example, risk to overlook local factors such as culture, which often leads to low local acceptance. Donations of stoves can also increase developing countries foreign dependency if the stove donations do not get accompanied by knowledge transfer which would enable the country to produce, repair and trade the stoves themselves [7]. Finally, using projects in poor countries to offset emissions stemming from wealthy countries also poses the moral question whether it is right to expect poor countries to change their habits and cut their carbon emissions, just so rich countries can continue with their carbon intensive habits.
Renewable energy
Investments in renewable energy are widely seen as the most promising offsetting project as they directly target the central carbon emission of our society - our reliance on fossil fuel energy [8]. Investing in renewable energy can count as a carbon offset if a company’s or individual’s investment is used for a new renewable energy plant which replaces energy previously sourced from fossil fuels.
A crucial criterion for being able to count investment in renewable energy as a carbon offset is its additionality. The money invested needs to be used for a project, which would not have been built otherwise. Only under this condition, the investment can replace fossil energy and reduce carbon emissions. Recent studies, however, have shown that the market for carbon credits based on renewable energy investments is full of credits stemming from several year-old projects. A purchase of such credits would therefore not result in any new carbon removal. [9]
To sum up, carbon offsetting is not such a simple solution as it might seem. Carbon capturing or reducing projects vary greatly in regards of their impact, their carbon storage, and their potential negative side effects on the local environment. Offers to purchase carbon-neutral products or services and companies’ claims to be carbon neutral due to offsetting practices should therefore be viewed with some scepticism. If done right and transparent, carbon offsetting does have potential in offsetting emissions that are unavoidable due to lacking carbon neutral alternatives. Replanting forests and investing in sustainable projects certified by reliable schemes like Goldstandard are helpful, and also necessary, if we want to tackle the Climate Crisis. However, as this article has shown, carbon offsetting is a highly complex issue, has uncertainties and limitations and is therefore far from being a simple solution to legitimise high carbon emitting activities. The most important and impactful tool to tackle the climate crisis will therefore always be to cut carbon emissions in the first place.
Sources:
[1] https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/fix/
[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2021/689336/EPRS_BRI(2021)689336_EN.pdf
[3] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/carbon-offsets-are-not-our-get-out-jail-free-card
[4] https://www.atmosfair.de/en/standards/forest_projects/
[6] https://www.atmosfair.de/en/climate-protection-projects/energy_efficiency/
[7] https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/08/10/are-carbon-market-financed-cookstoves-really-clean/
[8] https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/energy/short-guide-carbon-offsets
[9] https://energypost.eu/carbon-offsetting-via-old-wind-and-solar-farms-is-no-way-to-reduce-emissions/