Joseph Romm has been running a series of "rules of the road for carbon offsets" on these pages. This is a worthwhile endeavor, and as good of an excuse as any for me to provide some shade and color to the frequently misconceived debate over offsets. Although I mostly agree with Romm's conclusions, I don't think he chose the best route to reach them.
My intent is not to rebut Romm's proposed rules -- again, I (mostly) agree with all of the guidelines posted so far, even if they do contain some important errors of fact and emphasis. And more generally, I strongly support efforts to arm individuals with more information about offset quality.
But the rules are framed a bit oddly, offered up as some sort of counterpoint to a lawless industry peddling easy environmental solutions to polluters run amok. The first post announces an "aim to pick a fight with those overhyping offsets."
This framing is no doubt rousing for people who share this view of offsets, but it's not very helpful to the ostensible audience for such rules: real people and real companies looking to reduce and mitigate their environmental impact.
We know our customers at TerraPass, and so we know that people who buy offsets are far more likely than the general population to take a wide variety of actions on climate change, from bicycle commuting to directly lobbying their political representatives. These are the types of people who buy offsets, and these are the people who can most benefit from good guidelines, rather than polemic.
Romm's opening post also states: "No rules of the road exist for offsets. Until now." This is a fairly grand claim. It is also pretty obviously false. A number of offset standards are in varying stages of development; several credible industry surveys have already been published; and the extensive and frequently questioning media coverage of offsets has included any number of consumer guidelines.
But that's OK. The more, the merrier. Grist is potentially an ideal forum for such a discussion, because, unlike a standard newspaper blurb, blogs provide room for a lot more nuance. That's what I aim to provide.
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Comments
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naturescene Posted 6:13 am
09 Jul 2007
self regulation in the voluntary carbon market
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NonprofitWatch Posted 6:33 am
09 Jul 2007
So if a company is marketing the offset of harvesting and burning the methane from an industrial farm, this creates a system of interested parties that would be at odds with a regulatory framework that would require that all feedlots institute such a system and the companies deal with the cost. And let's not forget the companies looking for offsets who want easy options.
Finally, sadly too many of the mainstream enviros are intertwined with the corporate sector, for example Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council and others, for me to trust their judgement on the matter.
bernardo issel - http://www.NonprofitWatch.org -
bernardo (at) NonprofitWatch.org
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naturescene Posted 7:37 am
09 Jul 2007
Economic efficiency is a good thing because being cost-effective means that there is more free capital that can be directed to other endeavors.
So yes, companies are typically opposed to standards because standards take no consideration of economic situations while markets allow actors to make economic calculations.
The real question is, why do you think it is necessary to harm businesses in order to address climate change? We would like to see some changes in the way businesses function, but that in and of itself does not imply that we must harm businesses to do so.
I think that environmentalists need to drop the anti-corporate position. Most environmental groups that are doing real good in the world have already distanced themselves from this position. Regardless of what you think of the "mainstream enviros", they are the ones that are getting things done. ED is constantly forming partnerships with polluters to reduce pollution. The Nature Conservancy uses its funds to directly protect habitat rather than paying for lobbyists to persuade politicians to protect habitat. The people that whine about groups that are doing good in the world are either holding personal egos above results or just want to stall progress.
The best approach would be a completely voluntary carbon market, but that can only exist in a world where property rights over carbon exist. In a next best world, we must use the next best solution.
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Adam Stein Posted 8:05 am
09 Jul 2007
There is no single "formally agreed upon or consensus-based" guide to carbon offsets, and I'm not sure exactly why anyone would expect there to be. There's no formally agreed upon or consensus-based guides to mountain bikes or digital cameras either. Instead, there are lots of different guides, and the same will be true of offsets.
But it is obviously false to say that no rules of the road exist. As I said, I welcome the addition of your thoughts to this conversation, but it's not clear to me why your posts in Grist should count as more official than the Clean Air Cool Planet report, the Tufts report, the Center for Resource Solutions offset standard, the Voluntary Carbon Standard, the Gold Standard, DEFRA's guidelines, etc. None of these are perfect, but they are serious attempts to provide guidance.
As for consensus-based standards, you may want to check out the work CRS is doing. Their stakeholder-based standard for retail offset products has gone through several rounds of public review and is close to being finalized. It probably comes closest to your vision of a formal standard:
http://www.resource-solutions.org/mv/ghg.html
By the way, I think there's a lot of good stuff in the Clean Air Cool Planet report. I also think it has some methodological flaws, but it's a version 1.0. That's pretty much the situation across the board. It's a young industry.
As for errors of fact and emphasis, I have some more posts coming, although I'm definitely not going to be picking over your posts pointing out every tiny mistake. I don't think that type of blogging benefits anyone. I will say I wince every time you claim that offsets are "paying other people not to pollute." This is just flatly wrong, and it does undercut your posts to include basic definitional errors like this.
- Adam
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Penfold007 Posted 8:20 am
09 Jul 2007
The voluntary carbon standard is being put together by the Climate Group, a UK based non-profit. It's current draft is available here: http://v-c-s.org/
But here's a question: Is it ever really possible to prove additionality? The decision to make an investment is generally complex and involves multiple factors. To know whether the cost of carbon is the straw that breaks the camel's back involves a lot of unanswerable hypotheticals. Why not have a lax standard of additionality to encourage as many reduction projects as possible?
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wiscidea Posted 8:26 am
09 Jul 2007
Question ONE:
Is the conversion of fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas) to carbon dioxide the primary contributor to relatively high levels of global warming gases in the atmosphere? If not, where does most of it come from?
Forward!
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wiscidea Posted 8:33 am
09 Jul 2007
I'm not serious... it sounds a bit too shady. I'm going for more of a savanna environment.... Badda-Bing Badda-Bang!!!
Forward!
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Adam Stein Posted 8:45 am
09 Jul 2007
You ask an interesting question. Mark Trexler has a really good paper that addresses this topic. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it online with some quick Googling, but basically, the paper points out that when making a judgment about additionality, you can reach four possible conclusions: true positive (recognized good project), true negative (recognized bad project), false positive (bad project that sneaks through), false negative (good project that gets rejected). The strictness of your additionality standard will determine the relative amount of projects that get sorted into these different buckets. There are tradeoffs involved in picking any given threshold, and it's important to understand what those tradeoffs are.
But long story short -- I don't think we want to be too lax here.
- Adam
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Adam Stein Posted 8:51 am
09 Jul 2007
I think the most technically accurate way to put this is that the burning of fossil fuel is responsible for the majority of anthropogenic global warming. There would be a lot of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere regardless -- particularly water vapor. The problem is that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are rising quite rapidly, and that rise is primarily due to energy consumption and industrialization. Deforestation is another important source of CO2, causing about 20% of anthropogenic global warming, and agricultural methane is also a big issue.
In answer to your second, semi-serious question: unfortunately, no. Your plantation is too small to attract interest, and it wouldn't pass any sort of additionality test.
- Adam
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wiscidea Posted 8:56 am
09 Jul 2007
Forward!
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Adam Stein Posted 8:58 am
09 Jul 2007
Thanks, folks, I'll be here all night. Don't forget to tip your waitress...
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oregonj Posted 11:07 am
09 Jul 2007
There is a CO2 balance in the atmosphere. Humans are adding Capped CO2 plus Uncapped CO2 to that balance. An offset represents reducing a tonne of the Uncapped CO2 from being added (or one tonne being removed). Additionality assures that the offset tonne would have been emitted (or not removed)had the offset not been purchased.
An offset always obtains value from a capped system (even if it is only your personal accounting of getting to carbon neutral). The problem with being lax about offsets is that if you buy a lax offset in lieu of reducing your own emissions, nothing will have changed in the number of tonnes being emitted, since the definition of a lax offset is that there is not sufficient additionality (i.e. no tonnes in the uncapped sector are being reduced from what would have happened anyways) And if that is the case, the offset will have had no impact on the climate going from 380 ppm CO2 to 450ppm CO2 and beyond.
So that is why additionality is so important - and it is very difficult to measure. And that is why Terrapass, the CCX, and every supplier needs to be closely examined on the question of the additionality of their offset projects. And this market provides a classic situation where the "Buyer Beware" warning needs to be be strictly applied.
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wiscidea Posted 3:50 pm
09 Jul 2007
My purely hypothetical not-based-reality idea...
Step 1:
Establish boundaries for regional offset cooperatives. Could be states, counties, or somewhere in between.
Step 2:
Ecologists identify and document land not fully exploited for sequestering carbon. Could be brownfields, suburban development, agricultural land, whatever they can find. It is very important that the potential be documented.
Step 3:
Owners of such property are encouraged to join the offset cooperative, which will eventually transfer money to them so they can "improve" the land as far as carbon sequestration is concerned (plus a little extra to reward them for their effort). Payment is proportional to the net yearly gain in carbon sequestered.
The projects might range from planting a couple trees where they will capture more carbon than the current vegetation does to planting hundreds of acres of grassland where there is currently corn.
Step 4:
The cooperative LEASES the offsets to industries that wish to generate CO2. The leases go to the highest bidder. Perhaps the rate varies depending on how long the lease lasts. The profits are distributed to the members of the cooperative so they are further rewarded above the cost of the "improvements" they made to increase carbon sequestration.
I believe this will allow the "liitle guy" to benefit from all this offset stuff. I think an important feature of my plan is that no one will actually buy and own offsets, except for the organization directly responsible for increasing carbon sequestration. Corporations will not be able to purchase, accumulate, trade, drive up the value of, drive down the value of, or otherwise exploit control over the offset market. Furthermore, the offsets are not permanent. There is a lease that must be renewed. This ensures that nobody buys a forest so they can pollute forever even though someone else comes along 50 years later and cuts it down.
Thanks GM... I started thinking about this lease stuff after watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" It is time to turn the tables. No more selling stuff directly to corporations. They should lease the radio and television frequencies, access to fresh water, access to other natural resources, and carbon offsets... with no guarantee that the lease will be renewed. Highest bidder. Welcome to the free market.
Just my two cents... generated by a sleepy feeble brain than cannot, for some bizarre reason, get this offset stuff out of my head... even though I've not studied the issue, even though I'm very skeptical, even though I really know nothing about it, and I don't have a clue how it is supposed to save the planet.
Indeed, I just read that a small nuclear exchange between, say, India and Pakistan would lower the average global temperature by 2 degrees -- C or F, I don't recall -- and bring on a mini ice age. But what are the odds of such an event? Probably shouldn't worry about it. Now where's that catalogue of plants for northern gardens?
Peace.
Forward!
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Adam Stein Posted 6:07 am
10 Jul 2007
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wiscidea Posted 6:12 am
10 Jul 2007
Forward!
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wiscidea Posted 5:58 am
11 Jul 2007
In one hundred words or less, what are the top 10 preferred carbon offset activities? Use whatever criteria you prefer for ranking them.
Thank you.
Forward!
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