Should I be Carbon Offsetting?

Carbon offsets aren’t a all-purpose solution but they do serve to help the world transition away from fossil fuels. It is impossible for people to make a switch to stop using fossil fuels immediately. Therefore, for the time being carbon offsets can be a element of the puzzle as environmentally conscious and forward-thinking actors work to put together a sustainable future.
Here we’ll take a closer a look at carbon offsets–what they are, why they are important, arguments in favor of them, and some of the criticisms made against carbon offsets.

What Is Carbon Offsetting?

Carbon offsets are a method by which funds are directed towards projects that aid in reducing global emissions. Businesses or individuals often purchase carbon offsets instead of reduction of their carbon footprints when emissions appear inexpensible, or use both methods to help their efforts to reduce emissions further.

Carbon offset projects can include effective cook-stoves in rural villages and bio-gas production using organic matter, and a variety of initiatives aimed at reducing deforestation and regenerating forests that have been damaged.

The process of certifying projects to be eligible for carbon offsets isn’t an easy task. Carbonbay is involved in shepherding initiatives through the Byzantine regulatory maze which have been put in place under the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to make sure that not only emissions reductions are legitimate and legal, but also that there is no existing funding for projects like this. It is generally a sign that the project is a change from the norm and have a low chance of achieving success without credits. Emissions reduction credits permit projects to receive compensation for each metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions that are avoided. They can be certified by CDM or other standards recognized by the public which include The Gold Standard, and the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).

“Carbon offsetting … assists environmental projects that aren’t able to get funds by themselves.”

The Pros of Carbon Offsetting

Carbon offset can be beneficial at both ends It assists environmental projects that can’t secure financing on their own and also provides businesses with an increased opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint.

A lot of companies aren’t able to reduce their carbon emissions to the extent they’d like to. In some instances, it could be due to their footprint being already tiny (e.g. software company) However, they’d like to grow their business. Other industries, like heavy equipment or ocean shipping, simply do not have alternatives that are low carbon to service their market at present. In assisting in the financing of environmental projects that cut emissions, businesses can help make their way up for emissions they can’t eliminate themselves.

While many offset purchases are made on a voluntary basis in some cases, there are some places in which they are required in order to adhere to local regulations and standards and be able to avoid penalty. Another benefit of using the offset method. It gives regulators a tool to enforce environmental standards.

Others use offsets to show that the majority or all of their business is “carbon zero” or even “carbon positive.” This also creates a framework that allows these businesses to measure their carbon footprint. A lot of consumers today prefer doing business with such companies.

Carbon offsetting provides valuable resources for projects that usually trap carbon in the form of the growth of forests, and other techniques or eliminate emissionsthrough renewable energy generation or energy appliances. By focusing on projects that will not attract other kinds of financing, such as a first-of-its-kind in a particular region, they provide a valuable alternative to the more traditional financing mechanisms.

When a successful undertaking has been accomplished through offsetting and proved to be viable it’s generally simpler for follow-up projects to get funding from different sources.

Reputable studies have found offsetting to be a successful method to reduce greenhouse gases.

The Cons of Carbon Offsetting

A variety of criticisms have been directed at the carbon offset process too. Certain of them are philosophical in their criticism of the notion that wealthy companies can buy their way out, instead of taking more direct accountability for their carbon emissions. Some claim that offsets undermine the need for more vigorous collective action, like the carbon tax. Do offsets let polluters off the hook too easily?

Others point to more pragmatic issues:

Some forests protected by offsets have been later found to have burned or been logged. This may or may not be deliberate on the part of the recipients of the offsets.
Are the credit cards really needed, are they really necessary, or would the task be completed without them?
Are carbon measurement accuracy reliable, and can the entities monitoring their accuracy be trusted to perform the right accounting?
How do you deal with fraud?
Is global warming occurring too fast to allow carbon offsets to prove useful?

There are pertinent questions. While there’s no way to guarantee that a system will be perfect, many of these concerns were recognized and addressed when both carbon standards and practices change.

Carbon offsets aren’t intended to substitute immediate action but instead as a complement or in some instances, the only alternative. For instance, the airline industry employs numerous offsets since there is no practical way for commercial aircraft to fly without the use of fossil fuels. Under an international scheme called CORSIA that will see them limit emissions in 2019 and 2020 and have pledged to offset any increases in emissions after 2021.

Concerning forests that disappear following qualifying for offsets, this was addressed in the latest VCS standard. The standard only allows payment to be made to forest carbon sequestration that has already occurred in the past decade. To reduce risks, a certain percentage of funds paid in credits are put aside in “pooled buffers” for unforeseen loss, similar to insurance.

The measurement process is also changing. Renewable energy sources are simple to measure, since one needs only to take a look at the meters. Land-use projects like forestry could be more difficult to measure and require more sophisticated models and new technologies such as GPS satellite imagery, and drones have proven useful to provide a better understanding of how much carbon remains stored.