Some greens and congressfolk are questioning the efficacy of the U.S. House of Representatives' recent purchase of $89,000 in carbon offsets as part of their greening the Capitol initiative. "It didn't change much behavior that wasn't going to happen anyway," said Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress. "It just, I think, demonstrated why offsets are controversial and possibly pointless." Some of the offset funds went to farmers in North Dakota who have been using no-till farming techniques, which retain more carbon in the soil. Critics argue that many of the farmers were already using no-till methods prior to getting the cash due to other benefits of no-till like cheaper fuel costs and potentially higher yields. Funds also went to a power plant in Iowa that switched from burning coal to switchgrass for 45 days in 2006, though it's unclear if the project would have happened without the expectation of carbon-credit cash. Another project planted trees on tribal land in northern Idaho and also may have gone forward even without the offset funds. House administrator Daniel Beard, who brokered the deal with the Chicago Climate Exchange, said that the point wasn't whether or not the offset projects would have happened without the House funds, but "the point is that they did do it."
source: The Washington Post
U.S. warns China against ‘stillborn’ climate deal
U.N. climate chief raises the temperature with racy novel
Comments
View as Flat
GreenEngineer Posted 7:34 am
28 Jan 2008
Skepticism about carbon offsets is a good thing, and if they are going to be treated truly as offsets (i.e. permission to emit carbon elsewhere) then the additionality test is important.
That said, there is a place for economically supporting good practices, particularly good land stewardship practices by farmers. While it may be impossible to prove that these measures are "additional" (i.e. would not have happened otherwise), they are still worthy of support because they can improve the overall health of the land and the local environment.
Efforts of that sort are supported, sort of, through various federal conservation programs. But it would be really helpful if there were some way to channel private funds to support this sort of work. A company contributing to such efforts would certainly deserve kudos for supporting a healthy environment. It just shouldn't be tied to carbon specifically. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave many ways to quantify the effort, in order to monetize it. If there was a framework for doing so, this kind of investment might do very well as business scramble to look greener than each other.
Permalink
atreyger Posted 11:32 pm
28 Jan 2008
It's obvious that while many people on here, kudos GreenEngineer, understand that there are full and half-solutions, I don't think that people understand that whining is INCREDIBLY annoying. Kinda makes me want to punch the whiners in the mouth. And makes me want to vote Republican a little bit... Maybe not enough, but a little bit.
Permalink