POSSIBLE CO2 OFFSETS?
A CO2 offset usually means paying someone else to
reduce greenhouse gases (beyond what they would have done anyway) and claiming it
as your own reduction. The fallacy is that it usually involves double-counting,
where both you and they (or their country) claim the same reduction.
For example you join with others (usually through a nonprofit)
and:
(A) you pay for a power company to reduce its
emissions by 400.000 pounds of CO2 per year. This might be done by
energy conservation, CO2 capture, building windmills, reducing
transmission losses, etc., if feasible.
or (B) you pay for a landfill to reduce its
methane emissions by 400,000 pounds of CO2-equivalent gases per
year. Typically this means capturing methane and burning it to CO2,
which is much less harmful than methane.
or (C) you find 200 people in a poor country emitting
3,700 pounds of CO2 per year each. You pay them to cut back by 2,000
pounds each to 1,700 pounds per person per year. Maybe you provide solar
cookers, etc. Again you have a savings of 400,000 pounds per year.
or (D) you pay to expand a tropical forest which
absorbs 400,000 pounds more CO2 than the previous land use (e.g.
fields and pasture, and you pay to reduce the demand for these).
In any of these examples, suppose you pay 10% of the cost, so you
claim credit for reducing emissions by 40,000 pounds per year. You then
continue to emit 44,000 pounds per year, but say your net emissions are only
4,000 pounds per year.
However the landfill and
power customers
also can look at the new lower emissions by their landfill and power company, and they
too claim they are emitting 400,000 pounds per year less than before. The only
way to avoid double-counting is to pretend they are still emitting the same old
high levels. But all the CO2 reports and goals around the world look
at actual emissions, not what the emissions would have been if you hadn't paid
to reduce them.
Furthermore, your personal reduction only makes sense as part of a
worldwide reduction to the sustainable level of 3,700 pounds CO2 equivalent per person per year. Most
of those landfill and power customers themselves emit far more than this goal, and have
to reduce to that level for a sustainable earth, so you are claiming reductions
which they needed to make anyway.
The poor country example is different. These savings really would
help us get closer to a global goal. But you are unlikely to find people
willing or able to reduce their emissions so low. Just making and maintaining
the solar cookers uses up some of the CO2 savings. What can they buy
with the money you pay them without using up even more of the CO2
savings? As they develop (you want them to develop, right?) it will be hard
enough for them to keep emissions under 3,700 pounds per person per year, let
alone 1,700. Then consider the ethics and instability of such drastic
inequality in CO2 output. it involves 20 people living at a
destitute level of CO2 for every one person staying at the current
US level.
China is often able to sell offsets, since it has companies ready and
willing to reduce emissions from old manufacturing methods. However China, like
richer countries, already emits more than the sustainable level of CO2
per person, so it needs its own reductions, and counting them elsewhere is
double-counting.
The forest example does capture CO2 in years when you
expand the forest. There are several issues to remember. First, continuing the
same size forest does not capture more CO2, because the constant
cycle in a forest, of plants dying and decaying, releases as much CO2
as the forest absorbs. Plants take in CO2, release O2 and
put the C in their cells. Plants die and as they decay insects, fungi and
bacteria take in the C, combine it with O2 and release CO2.
Second, it is hard to reduce the demand for fields and pasture (e.g. for
soybeans and palm trees to make palm oil to make biodiesel - you don't want
that do you?). If you don't reduce the total demand, they'll expand into some
other forest. Third you need to ensure that your forest does not contract in
the future. Fourth if you want to call this your offset, you need to
ensure that the tropical country does not double-count the forest expansion as
part of its own net CO2 efforts. The example is limited to tropical
forest, since temperate forest reduces snow reflection and absorbs sun, so it
warms the earth even though it absorbs CO2. Planting in temperate
deserts would not have problems 2-4, but they don't have water. In temperate
forests some believe a little extra C stays in the soil each year, so the
forest absorbs a little CO2 every year. If this amount can be
estimated, it can offset other activities. In tropical forests, there is very
little buildup of soil; breakdown is thorough and rapid.
All the discussion above about paying others to reduce CO2
emissions is a version of the "cap and trade" method of limiting
emissions. That is a term used when governments cap CO2 emissions,
and allow emitters who can go below their cap to sell the savings to emitters
who can't cut so easily and stay above the cap. Overall the caps would be met.
On a long term world scale, people would have a cap, such as 3,700 pounds CO2
emissions per year, and people above the cap would have to buy emission rights
from people below the cap. Buying from people above the cap, who have no unused
emission rights to sell, doesn't get you anywhere. In fact, as mentioned on the
sustainability page, the 3,700
pound limit per person will have to drop even lower in the future as world
population rises, to keep world emissions at or below 32 trillion pounds CO2
per year, which in turn is necessary to hold the temperature down.
A landfill like the example above was the subject of a
controversy between Business
Week and Terrapass over CO2
offsets claimed by the 2007 Academy Awards ceremony. Supporting the landfill
purportedly let the stars offset the CO2 emitted by their celebrity
lifestyles. However that controversy only addressed whether current regulations
would have forced the methane to be captured anyway. Regardless of old
regulations, the earth does require both methane capture and CO2
cutbacks in our lifestyles. It is not a choice. It is both, and much more.
UK consumer group's overview of offsets with
helpful ratings and links
Friends of the Earth statement against offsets