Footprints and Offsets
The term carbon footprint can apply to a single event, such
as a journey, but often refers to the greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced by an
individual or organisation in a complete year, resulting from factors such as travel,
diet, and the use of goods and energy. Carbon footprints can be estimated using
a carbon calculator, and the resulting figure is typically given in equivalent
tonnes of carbon dioxide (tCO2e). Many online calculators will also suggest
that the user buys carbon offsets based on the size of the carbon footprint
calculated; for example, informed of an economy return flight from London to
New York, one calculator stated that 1.8 t CO2 had been produced, and that this
could be offset by a payment of £42 to “carbon offset projects in developing
and newly industrialising countries”. Carbon offsets for the individual will be
the main topic of this post.
Emissions of greenhouse gas depend not only an individual’s
lifestyle, but on geographical and temporal location, since the emissions
associated with a given use of energy vary from country to country and from
year to year. One figure for a typical annual individual footprint in the UK was
given as 12.7 tonnes CO2e (Pawprint, 2020). Those wishing to reduce their
footprint may be able to do so by changing their means of travel, avoiding
waste, modifying diet, improving house insulation etc., but may wonder how far
this process can be taken. A rough idea can be gained by providing a calculator
with figures based on a plant based diet, no flying, no private transport,
limited use of public transport, and very low expenditure and energy use. This
exercise indicates that to reach annual emissions below 2 or 3 tCO2e would be
very difficult for many people in the UK. The existence of a lower limit,
whatever its value, means that for an individual to approach zero GHG emission,
methods additional to reduced consumption are needed.
The cumulative quantity of GHG due to an individual over the
years depends on age and on all the other factors so far mentioned. Someone
whose life style has been fairly constant may be able to reach an estimate of lifetime
GHG emissions based on current annual emissions, or could use typical present figures
for the population, but these methods don’t take into account the long term
reduction of the carbon coefficient of energy which has taken place in countries
such as the UK. Individual lifetime carbon footprint has been described by Hausfather
(2019), who points out that the young must adhere to personal CO2 limits much
lower than those of the previous generation if the goals of the Paris Agreement
are to be met. By combining historical data on emissions and population with
projections for the future, Hausfather concludes that to limit global warming to
1.5°C,
“the average person born today can emit only an eighth of the lifetime
emissions of someone born in 1950.” The analysis presented “is based on the
changing global population and emissions during each individual’s lifetime”,
and for the UK it results in lifetime budget allocations of 794 tonnes of CO2
for someone born in 1950, while for those born in 2000, 2010 and 2017, the
allocations are 256, 147 and 86 tonnes of CO2 respectively. Hausfather points
out that calculating lifetime carbon budgets “is necessarily imperfect … Every
person is different and, in practice, individual emissions will be strongly
affected by income, behaviour and other factors.” For a UK citizen born in
1950, Hausfather’s lifetime budget estimate will be largely based on historical
data, and so is likely to be a reasonable guide which accounts for changes in the
carbon coefficient of energy over time.
From the above it seems that an individual concerned about
climate change who has taken steps to reduce his or her carbon footprint as far
as possible may still be faced with irreducible future GHG emissions of several
tCO2e per annum, as well historical emissions amounting to hundreds of tCO2e. To someone wishing to compensate for
these emissions, and having the necessary means, carbon offsetting may seem to
offer a solution. It has, however, attracted much criticism.
Childs (2020) refers to an EU study of United
Nations-sanctioned offset projects, which “found that three quarters of projects
were unlikely to have resulted in additional emissions reductions (meaning they
would have probably gone ahead anyway)”.
While claiming that carbon offsetting rarely works in practice, he
concedes that “that doesn’t mean it never works, and it clearly depends on
which projects are being funded.” Forestry
projects are criticised on the grounds that “to be a viable offset project, the
carbon must be locked away for thousands of years and tree planting or peatland
restoration can’t guarantee this.” It could be argued that Childs is setting
the bar a little high here, as few measures could guarantee results over such a
long period. A project which sequestered carbon for only a few decades would
have value if it bought time for the world to introduce more permanent
measures.
The limitations of forestry projects are also stressed by Al
Ghussain (2020). “Forests are one of our best lines of defence against climate
change and restoring them is crucial, but this can’t be a substitute for
reducing carbon emissions directly.” Her target is largely those multinational
companies which may use offsetting “to continue with their unsustainable
behaviour while shifting their responsibility for the climate onto the consumer”.
Here however we are primarily concerned with individuals who have already taken
substantial steps to reduce their carbon footprint.
Stevens (n.d.) promotes carbon offsetting, but nevertheless writes
that “Offsetting alone is clearly not going to tackle climate change” and that
worldwide and rapid decarbonisation is required. However until this is
accomplished “everyone will have a carbon footprint, regardless of how hard
they try to reduce it.” He sees reducing an “equivalent amount of carbon
emissions through voluntary carbon offsetting” as “the most cost effective,
fast and efficient way” of addressing this problem.
Many more criticisms of carbon offset programs can be found,
along with instances of failure and scams, and some are mentioned by Niiler
(2020) in an article entitled “Do Carbon Offsets Really Work? It Depends on the
Details”. Niiler also refers to a report from the University of Oxford which
attempts to define principles for carbon offsetting (Allen et al., 2020). This
report lists “some of the well-known risks associated with existing offsets”
such as “improper carbon accounting, re-release of stored carbon, negative
unintended impacts on humans or ecosystems” which can be reduced by current
best practice, and outlines the approach which is needed to ensure that
offsetting helps achieve a net zero society. Current best practice can be
summarised as minimising the need for offsets by reducing your own emissions;
ensuring environmental integrity by using verifiable, correctly accounted and
low risk offsets; and - for organisations - disclosing current emissions,
accounting practices, targets, and the type of offsets used. Having adopted
current best practice, the next stage is for users of offsets to “increase the
portion of their offsets that come from carbon removals, rather than from
emission reductions, ultimately reaching 100% carbon removals by midcentury to
ensure compatibility with the Paris Agreement goals.”(‘Carbon removals’ here
means direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere). A third stage is to move from
“Short-lived storage offsets [which] help buy time to reduce emissions” towards
“methods of storing carbon that have a low risk of reversal over centuries to
millennia, such as storing CO2 in geological reservoirs or mineralising carbon
into stable forms.” The final stage includes actions which are primarily applicable
to organisations, though the recommendation to support “the restoration and
protection of a wide range of natural and semi-natural ecosystems in their own
right” can also refer to individual choices of carbon offsets.
An individual approach to offsets is taken by Sloane (2019a).
He begins with the question: “If you had $1 million dollars and your goal was
to reduce as much CO2 in the atmosphere as possible by 2050, what would you
spend it on?” Sloane first cites work by the DrawDown organisation which ranked
activities in terms of their total capacity for CO2 reduction. At the head of
the list came refrigerant management, with a potential to reduced total
atmospheric CO2 equivalent by more than 89 gigatonnes; other examples were educating
girls, ranked fifth, with a potential of more than 51 Gt; and rooftop solar in
tenth place with over 24 Gt potential. The focus of the article is however primarily
on the cost of avoiding each tonne of CO2e emission. Using data from DrawDown
and other sources, Sloane shows the cost of CO2 reduction per tonne by various
methods, together with the potential magnitude of reduction in graphic form, highlighting
those methods with both low cost and high overall potential, which may be
candidate solutions for the million dollar philanthropist.
The five areas selected for both high impact and low cost
are silvopasture, “the practice of integrating trees, forage, and the grazing
of domesticated animals in a mutually beneficial way” with a cost of $1 per tonne
CO2e; tropical forest restoration on degraded land ($4 per tonne CO2e ); educating
girls and family planning ($5 per tonne CO2e); reduction of food waste ($8 per
tonne CO2e); and refrigerant management($10 per tonne CO2e). Some of the least
cost effective areas are listed for comparison: they include Green Roofs
($1,800 per tonne CO2e); Electric Vehicles ($1,300 per tonne CO2e); and High-speed
rail ($700 per tonne CO2e).
In a subsequent article (Sloane, 2019b) the writer considered
organizations working in some of the areas referred to above. He found none
concentrating specifically on silvopasture, and that organisations working on reduction
of food waste tended to be locally based (for example food banks). However,
tropical forests are of interest to the intergovernmental organisation Coalition
for Rainforest Nations, and several charities for girls & women are recommended
by The Life You Can Save, the organisation founded by the philosopher Peter
Singer. Sloane doesn’t name any organisations seeking to control refrigerants.
(However, Giving Green referred to Tradewater, mentioned below).
A number of organisations attempt to set standards for carbon
offset projects. Verra has its headquarters in Washington and claims that its “global
standards and frameworks serve as linchpins for channeling finance towards
high-impact activities that tackle some of the most pressing environmental
issues of our day”. It also manages the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), which
it describes as “the world’s most widely used voluntary GHG program.” Criteria
include proof of GHG reductions and removals, use of recognized measurement
tools, measures to insure permanence of GHG removal, and the requirement that “GHG emission reductions
and removals must be additional to what would have happened under a
business-as-usual scenario if the project had not been carried out” (Verra,
2021). The organisation lists projects under 15 categories, which include
energy, manufacturing, construction, transport, mining, fugitive emissions,
waste, land use and livestock management.
The Climate Action Reserve claims to be “the premier carbon offset
registry for the North American carbon market” and issues carbon offset credits
for projects in areas such as coal mine methane, land use, landfill, organic
waste processes and ozone depletion (Climate Action Reserve, 2021). The American
Carbon Registry aims “to create confidence in the environmental and scientific
integrity of carbon offsets in order to accelerate transformational emission
reduction actions.” Its interests include agriculture, forestry and other land
use; energy efficiency; industrial process emissions; renewable energy and transportation
(American Carbon Registry, 2020). The Swiss-based NGO Gold Standard lists the
various criteria which the projects it supports have to meet, such as making
positive impacts on at least three of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, one
of which must be Climate Action. (The 17 Goals are listed in UN, 2015). Gold
Standard recommends to “eco-conscious individuals” that they measure their
impact on the climate, take steps to reduce it as far as possible, and then
support appropriate projects through carbon offset schemes (Gold Standard,
2021). The organisation lists a number of projects which meet its standards,
and in appropriate cases gives a price in $/tCO2e. Some examples indicate the diversity of
projects and the cost of buying credits: a wind farm project in Indonesia,
$10/tonne; use of agricultural waste for home heating in China, $15/tonne; a
biodiversity project in S.W. Australia, $20/tonne; a reforestation project in
Nicaragua, $34/tonne.
A further group of organisations seeks to advise potential
donors in their choice of charities. The
American organisation Charity Navigator claims to have “become the nation's
largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities.” Its rating system involves
evaluation of “financial health including measures of stability, efficiency and
sustainability” along with accountability, transparency of policies, governance
and integrity (Charity Navigator, 2021). Founders Pledge (2021), based in
London, describes itself as “a global community of entrepreneurs” who find and
fund “solutions to the world’s most pressing problems”. Its charity research
empowers its members “to bring their resources to the global problem solving
table.” Giving Green (2020) offers “an evidence-based guide to help donors and
volunteers fight climate change.” It is largely focussed on America and
identifies two current key areas: “Carbon Offsets, which seek to cause
immediate, verifiable decreases of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere;
and US Policy Change, which aims to change US policy to drive considerable
reductions in emissions”. The Life You Can Save (2021) is an American
organisation which aims to make “smart giving” simple “by curating a group of
nonprofits that save or improve the most lives per dollar.” It publishes a list
of charities which “have been rigorously evaluated to help you make the biggest
impact per dollar.” It is mentioned here because its list includes the charities
for girls & women referred to in Sloane 2019b. Project DrawDown (2021),
based in San Francisco, describes itself as the world’s leading resource for
climate solutions, and aims to “uncover the most substantive solutions to stop
climate change, and to communicate them to the world.” It conducts an “ongoing
review and analysis of climate solutions” and information on these is provided
in its publication The Drawdown Review 2020 (available as a pdf download).
Organisations recommended by Charity Navigator include the Rainforest
Trust, Rainforest Alliance, Coalition for Rainforest Nations, and the Clean Air
Task Force (CATF). The Rainforest Trust (2020) has headquarters in Vancouver,
and claims to have “already helped protect over 33 million acres around the
world and have millions of acres in the pipeline, working toward the security
of 50 million acres.” Its website lists over a hundred projects, with a strong
emphasis on protecting endangered species. The Rainforest Alliance (2021) has
offices around the world, is registered in the USA, and lists its main issues
as Forests, Livelihoods, Climate and Human Rights. In the climate sector, it “focuses
on natural climate solutions like forest conservation, forest restoration, and
improved land management in order to increase carbon storage, avoid greenhouse
gas emissions, and build resilience to changing weather patterns.” The Coalition
for Rainforest Nations (2020) has its head office in New York and “assists
tropical governments, communities and peoples responsibly manage their
rainforests.” It quotes Founders Pledge: “Amongst all the organisations
evaluated, CfRN stands out because of outsized leverage of their presence at
key international negotiations grants them. As an example, they were
instrumental in securing an agreement on forestry in the Paris Agreement in
2015”. Clean Air Task Force (2021) has its main office in Boston, and is also recommended
by Founders Pledge. It describes its task as “to reduce climate change by
applying an overwhelming amount of force to some of the biggest levers to
reduce carbon and other climate warming emissions.” The issues with which it is
concerned are advanced energy systems, advanced nuclear energy, bioenergy,
decarbonised fossils energy, power plants, and super pollutants. Giving Green
recommends BURN (2021), which makes and distributes fuel-efficient stoves in
Kenya, and Tradewater (2021), whose mission is “to improve our environment and
create economic opportunity through the collection, control, and destruction of
potent, high impact greenhouse gases.” The Life You Can Save recommends Population
Services International (2021) which helps “women, children and families in the
developing world through disease prevention, treatment and testing, sexual and
reproductive health, and other health services.”
What place might carbon offsets have in the answer to Sloane’s
question: “If you had $1 million dollars and your goal was to reduce as much
CO2 in the atmosphere as possible by 2050, what would you spend it on?” One possible
answer would be that so much uncertainty surrounds offsets that none of the
money should be used to buy them. Another could be based on risk and comparison
to other opportunities. Sloane gave a figure of $1,300 as the cost of saving
one tonne CO2e through buying electric vehicles; assuming this to be correct,
and that the million dollars was purely for reducing GHGs without thought of
financial return, we can try a comparison with the cost of buying carbon
offsets. Suppose that offsets in a wide range of schemes are conveniently (but
not unrealistically) priced at $13 per tonne CO2e; we imagine buying a hundred
such offsets in different schemes. If only one of these schemes makes the
promised return, and the other ninety nine are complete failures, then provided
that they have done no harm, the one tonne of CO2e saved has cost the same in both
cases. If only two of the hundred offset
schemes perform as promised, the offset donation will have been twice as
productive as the electric vehicle expenditure. This is, of course, to over
simplify, but if we can be satisfied that no offset schemes produce significant
harm, it argues for a portion of the $1 million to be used on buying offsets. If
there are associated benefits such as human wellbeing or species preservation,
the argument is strengthened.
References
Al Ghussain, A., 2020, “The biggest problem with carbon
offsetting is that it doesn’t really work”, Greenpeace,
online
Allen, M., et al., 2020, “The Oxford Principles for Net Zero
Aligned Carbon
Offsetting”, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment,
University of Oxford
https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/publications/reports/Oxford-Offsetting-Principles-2020.pdf
American Carbon Registry, 2020, online
https://americancarbonregistry.org
BURN, 2021, online
Charity Navigator, 2021, online
https://www.charitynavigator.org
Childs, M., 2020, “Does carbon offsetting work?” Friends of the Earth, online
https://friendsoftheearth.uk/climate/does-carbon-offsetting-work
Clean Air Task Force, 2021, online
Climate Action Reserve, 2021, online
https://www.climateactionreserve.org
Coalition for Rainforest Nations, 2020, online
https://www.rainforestcoalition.org
DrawDown, 2021, online
Founders Pledge, 2021, online
Giving Green, 2020, online
Gold Standard, 2021, online
Hausfather, Z., 2019, “Global emissions of CO2 need to
decline precipitously over the next few decades, if the world is to meet the
Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to “well below 2C”, Carbon Brief.
Niiler, E., 2020, “Do Carbon Offsets Really Work? It Depends
on the Details”, Wired, online
https://www.wired.com/story/do-carbon-offsets-really-work-it-depends-on-the-details/
Pawprint, 2020, online
https://www.pawprint.eco/eco-blog/average-carbon-footprint-uk
Population Services International, 2021, online
Rainforest Alliance, 2021, online
https://www.rainforest-alliance.org
Rainforest Trust, 2021, online
https://www.rainforesttrust.org
Sloane, T., 2019a, “Applying effective altruism to climate
change”, online, Medium.com
https://medium.com/@tsloane/applying-effective-altruism-to-climate-change-e2d703f6414f
Sloane, T., 2019b, “Top charities for climate change”, online,
Medium.com
https://medium.com/@tsloane/top-charities-for-climate-change-54ddf6911e1
Stevens, R., n.d., “Carbon Offset Mythbuster: Thinking of
going climate neutral?” climatecare,
online
https://climatecare.org/carbon-offset-mythbuster/
The Life You Can Save, 2021, online
https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org and
https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/causes-to-support/women-charities/
Tradewater, 2021, online
UN,
2015, “The 17 Goals”, United Nations, online
Verra,
2021, “Standards for a Sustainable
Future”, online
Comments
Post a Comment