WP Editorial - The Next Big Climate Target - Ending Carbon Offset Scams

Most major airlines now offer customers an add-on to their ticket purchase: the chance to offset the carbon emissions generated by their flight. Guilt-free travel for a few extra bucks: It almost sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately, as new reporting shows, sometimes it is.

Carbon offsets or credits are investments in sustainability projects around the globe that, in theory, conserve enough emissions to counteract those produced by carbon-intensive activities such as manufacturing or jet travel. The projects represent a variety of efforts, including renewable energy development and reforestation schemes. Another popular offset class is forest conservation, touted as protecting trees that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And it’s not just travelers who can purchase a stake in such projects; corporations and governments have made carbon offsets a multibillion-dollar market by purchasing enough credits to earn their “carbon-neutral” labels.

The catch is that corporate climate pledges hinge on the validity of the offsets they purchase — and many are bogus. A recent investigation by The Post put the spotlight on the Brazilian Amazon, a key locus of forest conservation offset projects. For a carbon credit to be valid, the project needs to have “additionality” — meaning it must save carbon emissions that would not otherwise be reduced. According to The Post’s reporting, however, many projects illegally lay claim to public lands, which are already protected by national governments. So, the companies purchasing these credits — ranging from Netflix to Salesforce to Boeing — aren’t getting what they pay for. The Post’s analysis found no evidence that these corporations knowingly acted improperly, but the programs they bought into nevertheless don’t do much to offset carbon emissions.

The voluntary carbon market — where credits are purchased — appears to be rife with such problems. A lack of additionality is just one way in which they fail to deliver on their promises. To soak up as much carbon as they claim to, offset projects also need to remain in place for the long term and shouldn’t have harmful spillover effects. But, in some cases, a project can sell credits that commit to permanently storing carbon in a newly planted forest — only for that carbon to be released back into the atmosphere when the seller fails to protect the trees from being cut down. Many credits are also inherently difficult to validate: In the Brazilian Amazon, a popular format is the “avoided deforestation” venture. Instead of promising to plant new trees, these projects sell credits simply by committing to protect existing forests. Because there is no way to prove that an area would otherwise have faced unavoidable deforestation, it’s nearly impossible to quantify real carbon savings from such projects.

EDIT

https://wapo.st/3Z4kEnM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/26/carbon-offsets-scam-climate/