The first rule of offsets, according to Joseph Romm, is "no trees." This is a pretty good rule, as these thing go. The TerraPass offset portfolio contains no tree-planting projects, despite the fact that most consumers love trees and the fact that tree-planting projects are typically cheaper than offsets from renewable energy projects.
So if trees are both consumer-friendly and cost-effective, why avoid them? There are lots of reasons, and Romm chooses to focus on one of the more minor ones: a recent study suggesting that trees outside of tropical zones actually cause a net increase in global warming by absorbing sunlight.
I say this is possibly the least convincing not because I have any particular insight into the quality of the study. Rather, it's just generally true that a single study based on a novel computer simulation can at best be described as suggestive, not conclusive. We're a long way off from fully understanding the interplay between vegetation and climate. Given the perverse policy implications of a study suggesting trees actually contribute to global warming, extreme prudence is warranted.
Regardless, many more fundamental reasons exist to be wary of trees as a source of carbon offsets. To be fair, Romm does touch on some of these in a subsequent post.
The biggest one is timing. A carbon offset represents not just a specific amount of greenhouse gas reduction, but also a specific period in which the reduction takes place. One of the most basic principles of offset quality is that, other things being equal, you want to sponsor reductions that are taking place now, not at some far-off point in the future.
Unfortunately, trees grow rather slowly. And particularly when they're small, they don't sequester much carbon. The small print on tree-planting offsets typically indicate a 40-year maturity. If you buy a tree-based offset today, you're sponsoring a reduction that won't be complete until 2047, by which time we'll either be living in hurricane-proof seaside bunkers in the Rockies or flying around in hydrogen-fueled jet cars.
A second concern with tree-based offsets is permanence. An offset is only an offset if the reduction is real and ongoing. Trees have an unfortunate habit of dying or being cut down. Particularly given the time frames involved, with all the attendant issues over land rights, it can be very tricky to say what will happen to an individual forest several decades down the road. Some offset companies claim to guard against this risk by padding their tree offset purchases, but such tactics don't seem to guard against large-scale deforestation.
There are additional problems with tree-planting projects, which I catalog below. But before delivering the whole list, I want to provide some perspective to this downbeat picture.
The first bit of perspective is that tree-planting projects make up an extremely small percentage of offsetting projects worldwide. For example, reforestation accounts for 6 out of 1,783 projects in the CDM pipeline. Consumers are disproportionately aware of trees because such projects make up a disproportionate share of the tiny voluntary market. As mentioned, marketers love these projects because they're cheap and consumer-friendly. I wish this weren't so, but it doesn't really affect the worldwide market very greatly.
A second bit of perspective is that, despite these problems, it would be really great to bring tree-planting projects credibly into the carbon offsetting fold. Deforestation is the cause of 20 percent of anthropogenic global warming. And of course, deforestation is an environmental problem for dozens of reasons beyond just carbon emissions. Opening up another revenue stream to protect forests is an extremely worthwhile goal.
A final bit of perspective: the problems I have outlined, though serious, are not necessarily insurmountable. Organizations like the Pacific Forest Trust are trying to address issues of timing and permanence through novel offsetting protocols that rely more on forest preservation than just tree planting. Such protocols track biomass accumulation year by year, rather than front-loading future growth. The resulting offsets are far more expensive than typical tree-based offsets, but as the price of carbon rises, they will become economically viable.
So the first rule of offsets stands: unless you're willing to do a lot of diligence, you're best off avoiding trees. But let's keep our fingers crossed for innovation in this area.
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Postscript. For the sake of completeness, here are some further issues with tree-planting projects as a source of offsets. A third concern, after timing and permanence, is measureability. It's fairly complicated to measure the amount of carbon absorbed by a forest; some planting practices can actually result in a net release of carbon from the soil. A fourth is the aforementioned sunlight absorption issue. A fifth is the possibility of "leakage," which means that the new trees just displace deforestation, rather than reduce it. Sixth is a variety of well-documented quality issues with some tree plantations, such as monocultures of nonnative species, although these are addressable through proper project design.
In general, I find the fundamental issues of timing and permanence to be much more important than project-specific quality control issues, which hopefully will work themselves out in the longer term.
Make the kids pay: The economic effects of climate change on future generations
Kerry-Boxer muddies handling of international offsets
Ask Umbra on bike helmets
Comments
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noolympics Posted 5:14 am
10 Jul 2007
As the Chinese Communist Party invaded Mongolia after the WWII, millions of Mainland Chinese immigrants rushed into Mongolia to colonize the Mongolian land. The result is deforestation and creation of new farmland.
Yep, trees are gone now. Top soil is gone with the disappearance of trees. The reason? Well, grass does not have deep roots like trees; therefore, grass cannot hold soil as effectively as trees. Not only top soil, it is moisture that is kept by trees. Without trees, humidity will fall. With no moisture and no top soil, there comes the extension of the desert!
Ask a Beijingnese where the sandstorm comes from! They don't any clue. But I will thank the Chinese Communist Party for it!
Cut all the trees and you will end up with more deserts!
Who cares about carbon emission when the earth turns into a gigantic desert that we, human beings, can no longer reside in!
freehk.org | chinasick.blogspot.com | noolympics.blogspot.com
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odograph Posted 5:21 am
10 Jul 2007
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odograph Posted 5:24 am
10 Jul 2007
Nice understatement.
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Adam Stein Posted 5:34 am
10 Jul 2007
And of course, people can always choose to support tree-planting projects for reasons other than carbon sequestration -- although the issues of permanence and quality will be no less important.
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wiscidea Posted 5:40 am
10 Jul 2007
Those are some nice photos of the mountain bike trail you'll be riding on this afternoon. Very good documentation of how excessive bike traffic compacts soil, contributes to the formation of channels, and promotes erosion of soil held in place by just a few plants.
You might want to consider adding a few more sturdy fire-tolerant trees to the barren landscape. Not only will it hold the soil in place. It will soften the impact of sudden rain storms on the trail and shade you while you are riding. Furthermore, it will sequester more carbon than the current slow-growing vegetation, thereby cooling the planet as well.
Win win win...
Enjoy your ride. :)
Forward!
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Jo2 Posted 6:01 am
10 Jul 2007
for these reasons and one other:
Building new wind power capacity builds infrastructure that will make a low-carbon future possible. This is a side-benefit of the CO2 reduction purchased as an offset. It's important to stop deforestation, but planting trees doesn't build the infrastructure that will make it possible for our society to live in a way that curbs the climate crisis.
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Adam Stein Posted 6:05 am
10 Jul 2007
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odograph Posted 6:06 am
10 Jul 2007
The sad thing is that we like single-tracks, or overgrown double-tracks ... but most "trails" out here are scrapped off fire roads. After a whatever-ton cat goes through, I don't feel to guilty.
FWIW, I have seen MTB trail damage, and would myself close some trails. Others ... ten years of heavy traffic and they don't look too bad. Come to think of it, those trails might be 20 years old.
(I've done trail work with Share, but I admit not lately.)
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naturescene Posted 6:35 am
10 Jul 2007
If property rights over ecosystem services were well defined and enforced, then markets could form for all sorts of goods and services: habitat, water filtration, storm buffers, flood control, carbon sequestration, etc. Not every ecosystem could generate credits for each of those things, but it would probably be able to generate a few. More credits to sell gives more landowners the incentive to get into the business of protecting ecosystems.
The myopic focus on one issue - global warming - and even more narrowly, carbon dioxide, seems to have made too many people forget that we have other battles to fight as well.
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Sam Wells Posted 9:52 am
10 Jul 2007
You know the BS about European companies and Palm Olive developing massive tree plantations in the tropics - they not only want to make GHG credits and make one heck of a profit off date palms. That is not only ludicrous but deceitful as well.
The whole concept of "sinks" from natural sources such as forests and oceans is fundamentally flawed. You reduce what you generate and get on with it! /sammie
Onward through the fog
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Adam Stein Posted 10:55 am
10 Jul 2007
More generally, "You reduce what you generate and get on with it!" is a slogan masquerading as a solution. It's utterly impossible for humankind to conserve its way out of climate change. The solution has to involve renewables.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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missyjane Posted 12:45 pm
10 Jul 2007
If the UN's CDM is low-quality, please tell us what high quality project is?
You also acknowledge, correctly, that deforestation is a major part of climate change, 20%.
Your issue seems to be they are rare, which obfuscates the issue and says nothing about their quality and worthiness. Being high-quality and rare only means we need more.
There were less than 1 million cell phones in the US in 1990 and yet the industry did OK. Wind is extremely rare in the US, but I am sure Adam and Joe would agree it is good.
By contrast, terrapasss offsets meet no such UN certification. And Businessweek looked at their projects and gave them a very low quality grade:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_13/b40270 ....
I like offsets and have bought them in the past. I think they serve an important purpose. I am not sure the value of Adam or Joe's rants.
missy
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Adam Stein Posted 12:56 pm
10 Jul 2007
Nor is my issue that tree-planting projects are rare. In fact, I was holding their relative rareness out as a saving grace. My issue is the other six substantive problems that I laid out.
The purpose and value of my, er, rant is to help people who are interested in offsets to identify high-quality ones that actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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missyjane Posted 1:26 pm
10 Jul 2007
You say "almost" no projects have made it through the CDM process, which shows very clearly that projects are accepted under the UN CDM.
Rare means nothing. CDM has approved few of many types of projects.
By extension you imply how difficult it is to get through the CDM process. So to get through must mean something.
CDM may not be above reproach but show me a certification that is higher and more accepted? I researched this for an internship and can tell you CDM offsets are the highest priced tons in the world. BTW, CDM also certifies renewables and efficiency.
The conclusion: sequestration projects are CDM accepted and CDM is the highest accepted certification in the world.
By contrast, BusinessWeek showed that terrapass pays very little for its offsets and the projects were, according to the project owners, not additional.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_13/b40270 ...
What should a consumer choose?
missy
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:36 pm
10 Jul 2007
Where can I cite this figure from?
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:47 pm
10 Jul 2007
Especially give the fungability of food crops and farm crops.
For instance growing soy for food in deforrested regions of Brazil, since massive quantities of soy have been removed from the US export marktet.
http://greyfalcon.net/soy2
Deforrestation from biodiesel could easily eliminate centuries worth of biofuel planting.
Since deforrestation accounts for CO2 in the trees, in the soils, evaporative cooling, and albedo from diurnal water vapor cycles.
http://greyfalcon.net/tropics3
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adriandeveny Posted 9:51 pm
10 Jul 2007
I'm starting to think that the reason these projects are failing simply has to do with lack of demand due to default buyer liability for emissions reductions. Since there is a lot of risk that forestry projects won't actually result in additional emissions reductions due to the problems mentioned by Adam, most buyers go with the safer bets in the industrial sector. Plus, industrial emission reductions tend to be much cheaper (especially when you're dealing with methane or HFC's). That said, forestry projects can be cheap since that have the potential to be scaled up, but at small scales they are not cost competitive. This, of course, results in a major damper to supply.
So in the end, in the current CDM structure, there is not much potential for supply or demand of forestry credits.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the best hope yet is for the implementation of the Compensated Reductions approach to reduction of emissions from deforestation. This proposal has substantial backing from many countries and is the most likely proposal to address deforestation in the post-2012 commitment period.
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metalman Posted 1:04 am
11 Jul 2007
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Adam Stein Posted 2:49 am
11 Jul 2007
The primary source of the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial period results from fossil fuel use, with land use change providing another significant but smaller contribution. Annual fossil carbon dioxide emissions4 increased from an average of 6.4 GtC per year in the 1990s, to 7.2 GtC per year in 2000-2005. Carbon dioxide emissions associated with land-use change are estimated to be 1.6 GtC per year over the 1990s, although these estimates have a large uncertainty.
Yes, biofuels can also lead to deforestation, although it would be misleading to say that this has been a major historical cause.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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Sam Wells Posted 3:13 am
11 Jul 2007
Example - slash and burn deforestation took out 20% of the biomass of natural forests. Well, replant those forests and wait 40 years for them to mature. THEN you might be able to claim real reductions if you went further than that 20%.
That kind of logic leads me to believe that any GHG credits due planting new trees is ... well rather poor thinking at least. We have other reasons for planting trees.
Meanwhile man-made GHG keeps growing and growing. Go figure, but I can not heard a single valid argument that planting a tree is rational or reasonable. Sure, it helps, but at the end of the day we're still going backwards! /sammie
Onward through the fog
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Adam Stein Posted 5:58 am
11 Jul 2007
I wish there were such a standard, because then we could just use it and be done with it. But there's not. For example, a large percentage of CDM credits come from refrigerant projects in China, which pretty much no one thinks are environmentally worthwhile.
And, yes, rarity does matter. Rarity indicates that there isn't a large supply of high-quality projects out there. It isn't particularly interesting that in theory the CDM thinks forestry is OK. In theory, I think forestry is OK too, as indicated by my endorsement of Pacific Forest Trust. What matters is whether high-quality projects actually exist and are available for sale. Given that offset retailers aren't selling the CDM credits that you approve of, what's your point exactly?
Finally, it's clear you think you can score easy points by repeatedly linking to a single nasty article about us, but a) your understanding of the article is way off, and b) the article itself was deeply flawed. We've dug into the issues raised in way more depth than I can go into here, but the entire discussion is on our web site.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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jameskr Posted 9:52 am
11 Jul 2007
It seems as though you never really brushed up on your Marrakech Accords
And, yes, rarity does matter. Rarity indicates that there isn't a large supply of high-quality projects out there
According to CDM rules, reforestation offsets under the CDM for the 2008-12 containment period are limited to one percent of CDM purchases for Annex I countries. Those 6 projects represent .34% of projects and I have a feeling that if it were done on total tons of CO2, that number would probably be pretty close to 1%, which doesn't make them "rare" at all, they're right in line with the UN rules, which you don't seem to have a very good understanding of.
I think my point is that I know nothing about carbon offsets, but in 10 minutes of Google searching I found conclusive evidence that your rarity argument is flat wrong.
I have the utmost respect for your position here and Terrapass as an organization, but it's pretty clear that Jospeh Romm doesn't really know anything about carbon offsets and you don't really know anything about reforestation.
I personally don't see why Grist is allowing you to write on something you don't really know much about. They should invite someone from The Nature Conservancy or The Pacific Forest Trust to write an article about the pluses and minuses of reforestation as carbon offsets so we readers can get a real understanding instead of clearly uninformed opinions.
-James K.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:18 am
11 Jul 2007
Well it certainly is the reality as we head forward.
Brazil is becoming the new foodbasket of the world.
While at the same time the largest terrestrial carbonsink on earth. (The ocean is bigger, but there's not much we can do about that with any certainty)
Soy is the top cash crop in Brazil and is now a leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon. The Amazon lost 6,950 square miles of rain forest between 2003 and 2004, while some 4,633 square miles of soybeans were planted during that time.
Brazil produces more agricultural foodcrops than any country in the world. And similarly, more biofuels than any other country in the world.
And they are just getting started. Once they finish their TransOceanic Highway linking Eastern Brazil, with the Pacific Ocean. They are going to kick it into high gear. Exporting as much as they can to Pacific Ocean markets. And they expect that will happen as soon as 2009.
They claimed a 2 year moritorium on Soy in deforrested regions, but that's basically meaningless:
But two years is an insignificant period for soy monitoring, especially for new producers carving plantations out of the rain forest, Adario said.
"Anyone who lives here knows that the first year you clear land, slash-and-burn and put some cows on the land," he said. "The second year you pull out stumps and plant rice. Soy is only planted the third year - after the ban loses effect."
Whats more, their "protection" is effectively to rot the rainforrest directly from inside it's core, rather than nibbling at the edges.
And the government is basically powerless to do anything about the massive illegal logging and farming operations.
It could take as much as 300 years of biofuel growth just to get back to the status quo, when you include deforrestation.
And even if we grow "green" fuels in the US, we are still feeding this vicious cycle, by removing food crops from the global market. There's no escaping it.
_
Unobjective Optimism is perhaps the most dangerous thing about biofuels.
When it comes to the hidden negative consequences,
People just don't want to think about them.
They want to stay blissfully ignorant.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:19 am
11 Jul 2007
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Adam Stein Posted 10:49 am
11 Jul 2007
I regret to say that you're confusing two very different numbers. The Marrakech Accords state that Annex I countries are allowed to offset no more than 1% of their emissions using forestry projects. That's an entirely different thing than saying that only 1% of CDM credits can be from forestry.
1% of total emissions from Annex I countries is equivalent to about 100 megatons (I think -- I'm doing the math quickly). So that's the cap on forestry credits.
Of that 100 megaton cap, here's how many forestry credits have been issued to date: zero. None of the six registered projects have issued any credits so far.
Here's how many forestry credits are expected to be issued by 2012, the end of period to which the Marrakech Accords apply: 3.9 megatons, or approximately 4% of the allowed total.
So the Kyoto signatories set a tight cap on forestry offsets, and then managed to only come up with projects totaling 4% of the cap. Kinda rare, I'd say, but that's just my uninformed opinion.
Let's peel back the onion a bit further. Why do you suppose forestry offsets were capped at 1%? Because the UN hates trees? Or because of a variety of concerns related to the ones I outlined in my post?
P.S. The folks at Pacific Forest Trust read Grist too. I talked to them just a little earlier today. They seemed pretty happy with what I wrote.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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jameskr Posted 11:57 am
11 Jul 2007
I do have another question: In the Business Week article mentioned by Missy (Which you guys did a fine job rebuking), it says the methane tons you purchase cost less than 2 bucks a ton to create.
Fast forward to your article that laments how "cheap" forestry offsets are. At the same time, in an interview Laurie Weyburn claims it would cost the Pacific Forest Trust $10 to offset one ton of CO2. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/pelosi-makes-carbon-n ...
That's about 5 times as much as the Business Week article says a methane project costs. How is that even remotely a cheap credit?
I still don't feel we're getting the whole picture here.
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Adam Stein Posted 1:50 am
12 Jul 2007
The resulting offsets are far more expensive than typical tree-based offsets, but as the price of carbon rises, they will become economically viable.
The number I have in my head is that PFT credits cost about $12/ton, which aligns pretty well with the Pelosi article. Many tree-planting projects, in contrast, cost $1/ton or less. The difference is simply due to the different nature of the projects. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the forestry protocol that PFT is using, but I gather that it's quite heavy on monitoring and measurement. This is what makes it high-quality. It also makes the credits more expensive. If you're interested, you can dig into the details here:
http://www.climateregistry.org/PROTOCOLS/FP/
Tree-planting projects, on the other hand, can range pretty dramatically in quality. Putting up a mangrove plantation in a developing country can be quite inexpensive.
It's important to note that there's nothing inherently wrong with a source of carbon credits being less expensive. All other things being equal, it's better for the environment when credits are cheap, because it means more will be purchased. But all other things are generally not equal at this early phase of market development, so quality concerns are important.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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