CARBON OFFSETS: DILEMMA RESOLUTION?

Do carbon offsets live up to their promise?
Moises Velasquez-Manoff, January 10, 2006 (Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo News)
- In 2006, "carbon neutral" became the New Oxford American Dictionary's word of the year, evidence not only of the "greening" of our culture, but of our language as well…climate concerns may soon "green" our wallets as well…2007 is poised to see the industry of carbon neutrality - so-called carbon offsetting - grow dramatically…

- The consumer pays a third party to remove a quantity of carbon (in the form of a greenhouse gas) equal to what he or she emits. But how voluntary carbon offsets actually work is unclear at best, and potentially fraudulent at worst…No current certification or monitoring system has any teeth, and there is no easy way to confirm that offsetting companies are doing what they promise…
- The first-ever ranking of carbon offsetters recently released by Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit in Portsmouth, N.H., graded 30 companies on a scale of 1 to 10; tellingly, three-quarters scored below 5. Critics, meanwhile, question whether the carbon market might be a dangerous distraction at a time when decisive action is needed to avert climate catastrophe…
- Many companies have nonetheless moved to make carbon neutrality part of their 21st-century brand identity. Travelocity and Expedia now offer customers the option of offsetting carbon emissions associated with their trips for a few extra dollars. In 2005, "Syriana" became the first carbon-neutral movie. In 2006, "An Inconvenient Truth" followed suit to become the first such documentary. With the purchase of 170,000 tons of carbon offsets, HSBC declared itself the first-ever carbon-neutral bank. Other companies, including Google and Ben & Jerry's - not to mention musical groups such as the Dave Matthews Band - are moving toward, or have arrived at, various levels of carbon neutrality…

- The volume of metric tons of carbon traded on the voluntary market doubled last year over 2005. It's widely expected to double again in 2007…
- Carbon markets fall into two broad categories:
- 1. The cap-and-trade system. Countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, an amendment to the global treaty on climate change, participate in this system by setting a limit, or cap, on greenhouse-gas emissions. Those companies that emit less than their allotment receive credits that they can sell on carbon exchanges. Those that emit more must purchase credits in order to avoid financial penalties. (The voluntary Chicago Climate Exchange also operates this way.) Proponents of this system trust the innovative power of the free market to promote energy efficiency.

- 2. The voluntary carbon market. In the United States, the market for carbon offsets is voluntary, driven primarily by corporations seeking to enhance their brand identity or to familiarize themselves with what they consider to be an inevitability…
- There are many ways to remove carbon from the air, each operating on a different time scale and all of them of different "quality." You can capture greenhouse gases by planting trees. You can also prevent greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere by burning methane released from animal manure and landfills. (As a greenhouse gas, methane is 23 times more potent than CO2.) Or you can preempt its release by building alternative-energy sources such as wind- and solar-power devices…
- Unless you're willing to visit Uganda in 20 years to verify the existence of a new tree, a carbon offset is arguably invisible…
- CA-CP's "A Consumer's Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers"…ranks offsetting companies on factors like transparency, third-party certification, their efforts to educate consumers, and how well they prove they're not selling the same carbon offset more than once…

- Two San Francisco organizations, Business for Social Responsibility and Ecosystem Marketplace, recently joined forces to write guides on the voluntary carbon market, and Ecosystem Marketplace is about to release a book on the topic. This spring, the Center for Resource Solutions in San Francisco plans to release a certification standard it hopes will be universally adopted…
- But while experts disagree on the effectiveness of the carbon market at averting global warming, nearly everyone agrees on two points. First, the fact that people are beginning to factor in the cost of their carbon footprint when doing business is good…
- Second, the more money invested in renewable energy, the better…