How to Buy Carbon Offsets That Really Help the Environment
The carbon offset may sound too good to be true. In theory, the compensation works like a large sponge, absorbing all the emissions you put into the environment when traveling by plane or in a car. All of this also comes with a relatively low cost: you can offset your emissions on a 12-hour flight for the price of an airport cocktail.
Their popularity has skyrocketed in recent years. Most people may only know them as a little feel-good box that you can check when you book your plane ticket through some carriers, but now you can buy them from various suppliers when you feel a particularly heavy buildup of carbon. One supplier, the nonprofit Cool Effect , saw a 700 percent increase this summer, thanks in part to teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who sailed across the Atlantic to America to raise awareness of aircraft carbon emissions. travel.
“The boat she took on brought her to the main stage. It was truly incredible, ”said Blake Lawrence, Marketing Manager for Cool Effect. “For a week and a half, we have seen incredible interest in travel reimbursements.”
But since we live in darkness, even this seemingly positive step in the fight against climate change has some pitfalls, possible scams and unscrupulous operators. Here’s what you need to know to navigate carbon offsetting and make the best use of it on the planet.
So do they really work?
If by “work” we mean reaching the goal of capturing carbon from the atmosphere, then yes, some of them do work! Some are more effective than others; some of them are just a bizarre form of “green” that doesn’t really contribute to the big picture. The question is how to choose the ones that are worth the money and that actually channel most of the money raised towards climate change.
“Of course, compensation works,” said Craig Ebert, president of Climate Action Reserve, one of the main agencies reviewing compensation programs. “There is a lot of mysticism in them, frankly, but compensation is nothing more than direct emission reductions.”
Offsets come in many different shapes and sizes. The market for offsets that large enterprises are buying is much more complex than we need here. But the types that we buy for travel are simpler and are used for various projects: not only for reforestation, but also for capturing methane, building biogas reactors and ancillary projects that help reduce dependence on fossil fuels, such as wind farms. ; basically anything that can help capture carbon or reduce carbon production in the first place.
Not everyone is created equal. Environmentalists, for example, are skeptical of compensations that are solely aimed at preserving forests, arguing that they save forest land from deforestation and other destruction. Poor quality compensation programs are prone to what the industry calls leakage, where compensation pays to preserve one piece of forest only for the property owner to clear a nearby piece of wood.
An investigation by ProPublica in May found that these types of compensation often did not actually balance reported pollution, or the results were quickly reversed. The investigation also notes that investment in planting new trees is not enough to replace old ones. Virgin Atlantic stopped purchasing from one of these programs in 2017 after environmentalists pointed out flaws.
“In this sense, offsetting is like the most forgiving credit card in the world,” writes ProPublica, “that the buyer gets all the benefits in advance, and it takes a century to fully pay off the debt.”
The good news is that it becomes easier to determine which ones work, and new rules will make them even more prevalent.
What offsets NOT to do
Compensation is NOT a license to pollute the environment or go about your life as it is now without any modification. Environmentalists fear people treat compensation in a way that paper straws can make someone feel good about saving the oceans, even if they order fish fillets on the road from their oversized SUV.
Offsets are not an eraser that will erase your carbon footprint; they are the last step in the process of reducing your emissions. Yes, it is easier for people to understand compensation for one trip than whole life changes. But the low cost can be deceiving: a 13-hour round trip can be offset for $ 16.64 on Cool Effects; A 1,000-mile trip in a Ford F150 pickup can be offset for as little as $ 4, according to Carbonfootprint.com (here we have more information on tracking your flights’ carbon footprint and overall impact ). It can trick people into thinking they can buy their way to a climate-neutral lifestyle instead of a real solution: just do less .
“Your first step should always be to reduce your own emissions,” advises the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Drive fewer miles, fly less, and don’t overheat or overheat your home.”
The goal is to offset carbon emissions that you cannot easily reduce on your own. So while you may decide to cycle to the grocery store instead of sitting in traffic, literally eat everything but meat, and cut back on single-use plastic yourself, you can’t easily cycle to your country. business meeting. And this is when you buy offsets.
How to choose the right offsets
You want your offset to be validated and permanent. Some of the reimbursements you buy through airlines lack transparency, so you cannot be sure if you are choosing one that has been certified by a third party agency.
For example, Delta offers carbon offsets for their flights and adds them on their website, but doesn’t offer verification information or indicate what they’re aiming for (the link to a sample project called Conservation Coast was broken when I looked at the site). The company’s PR department pointed me to an article and a press release on their website detailing the project. This is not to say that these compensations are nonsense, it is just difficult for the average buyer to know for sure.
When buying compensation, experts advise you to check if it is verified by a third-party agency such as Climate Action Reserve, Verified Carbon Standard, Climate, Community, and Biodiversity Standard, Verra or American Carbon Registry; RainForest Alliance also checks some compensation, as well as other environmental groups.
Third-party verification agencies send their own inspectors to review the data and validate the credit claims to make sure it actually works as advertised and to make sure the money is actually going into the project and not the overhead.
One of the main things testers look at is to make sure that the offset will be in addition to projects already planned and paid for, or projects that require loans to make this a reality – that is, the money does not have to go to a wind farm that is already under construction, or forest that is already slated for protection. Ebert said the goal of carbon offset is to encourage new behaviors that have not yet been applied in the market.
When considering a project for inclusion in its credit market, Cool Effect will also make sure the client does whatever else is necessary to mitigate its impact.
“When they come up to us, we say, ‘Hey, that’s great, make sure you do the rest, too,” Lawrence said. “You need to request alternative energy from your local energy supplier. For big business, you need to have good waste [methods], get rid of disposable plastic. We are an educational company as well as an offset provider. “
How to actually buy them
Now, for which ones to buy and for how much. Cool Effect is a trusted and respected compensation site; It includes a simple calculator so you can see how many tons of carbon you need to offset in one flight. Compensations purchased through trusted Terrapass can be made with this tool to calculate the total carbon footprint for your car, home energy and air travel. Carbonfund.org , also vetted by third parties, takes a different approach, allowing customers to choose compensation packages based on overall lifestyle, car model, home type, or even the size of the event.
Verification agencies such as the Climate Action Reserve and the American Carbon Registry also include searchable databases where you can see which projects are being tested for legitimacy (which is a good place to research advertised airline offset projects) or look for others. who can directly support them. Some providers allow compensation as a gift , which is also a fun way to drag and drop your carbon-belching friends.
There is no fixed price for compensations, but they tend to be the same for different projects: Compensation for an eight-hour flight on Cool Effects costs $ 10.36. With Terrapass, you can offset 36,000 tonnes of carbon – the average annual footprint of an individual America – for $ 180. On Carbonfund.org, it costs $ 90 to reimburse 2,200 miles for an SUV or truck ride.
‘There is no silver bullet’
Lawrence cited a quote from climate change activist Bill McKibben that examines the effectiveness of compensation: “There is no silver bullet in tackling climate change. It looks more like a silver buckshot. “
The quote highlights the multidimensional approach required to tackle climate change beyond compensation.
The future is at least optimistic for the aviation industry. Next year, 193 countries will adopt the Carbon Compensation and Reduction System for International Aviation (CORSIA), a United Nations-backed plan (albeit voluntary) for the aviation industry to commit to buying more carbon credits. JetBlue has announced plans to move completely to zero carbon emissions this year through a combination of alternative fuels, offsets and operational changes such as more direct flights. Delta has pledged to halve its carbon footprint by 2050.
It’s too early to tell which of these airlines’ changes will be most effective, or you should prefer one if you’re concerned about climate change. But tackling climate change will take a lot more than just ticking a box when booking a flight.
“Don’t think, ‘Hey, I don’t need to change my behavior,” Ebert said. “The planet is roasting and we have no time. We are heading for a much warmer and more unstable world if we don’t drastically change our emissions. ”