Offsetting isn’t broken; it’s just growing up.
A nascent carbon market fraught with complexity and minimal oversight is proving unready for a carbon rush which could be worth trillions by mid-century. But the growing pains we are seeing are hallmarks of a vital beginning, not a reason to give up.
Before beginning my own carbon removal journey, I would sometimes wonder how it was possible to offset travel so cheaply and easily, ticking a box and agreeing to a modest fare bump. I now know those doubts were warranted. Dubious accounting, wishful thinking and wilful ignorance can seem rife in the offset world. Greenwashers are delighted to abuse this fragile system, and even the best-intentioned purchasers are not immune. To cite just a few notorious examples from recent years, we’ve seen projects overridden, indigenous communities forced from their homes and credits sold to protect unthreatened forests. With demand outstripping quality supply and new pathways opening up more quickly than adequate verification, these frustrating and occasionally repugnant revelations shouldn’t be a surprise.
And yet we desperately need carbon removal. Reducing emissions isn’t enough; we must also repay the debt that industrialisation has run up - some 860 billion tonnes of excess Carbon Dioxide Equivalents (CO2e) in the atmosphere. No known carbon removal pathway is perfect. But it is irresponsible to dismiss or delay Carbon Removal because it fails to be a miracle cure that conforms to our every ideal.
One thing is certain: if we fail to invest now, scaled carbon removal will come too late. Here “investment” means a great deal more than money alone. It means ensuring innovation in carbon removal must come at the same time as emissions reduction, never at its expense. It means pressing forward with Nature Based Solutions and Engineered ones in parallel, because neither soil nor trees can shoulder the whole burden and scaled engineered solutions are still in their infancy. It means honest, pragmatic debate about what solutions are appropriate in which circumstances and what tradeoffs are - and are not - acceptable.
So let’s talk about tradeoffs.
Nature offers elegant carbon removal pathways with tangible co-benefits and we won’t make the carbon maths add up without them. However natural carbon sinks weren’t designed with the polluter’s convenience in mind. Measuring the carbon taken up by oceans, soils and forests full of miraculous natural variability can be difficult. Whereas you can point to a bushel of wheat or a gram of gold, carbon taken up by the land or ocean is harder to trace as it moves through ecosystems. It may also need long term protection lest years of accumulated carbon can be lost in minutes when a forest is burned or a field tilled. Then there are the unintended consequences, like displacing food production or harming biodiversity through reforestation. For all these reasons and more, harnessing the power of nature to fix the carbon imbalance requires enormous care and patient effort. Done wrong, these pathways may do more harm than good. Done right, these pathways offer the cheapest carbon removal with greatest co-benefits.
Engineered solutions aren’t perfect either, by any stretch. Bioenergy teamed with carbon capture has big potential under the right conditions, however its relevance depends entirely on the provenance of (and alternative potential uses for) feedstock biomass. Direct Air Capture will be a key part of the puzzle, but present day installations are greedy for natural gas, electricity or costly adsorbents and could end up underpinning fossil fuels without more innovation. Dedicated carbon capture technologies may also depend on sequestration channels which also carry risk and expense, ranging from pipeline infrastructure to underground drilling. The upside is that engineered solutions tend to offer better measurability, additionality and permanence, and under the right conditions have the potential for enormous scale and to enhance or accelerate natural processes.
There is plenty to be hopeful about. Smart people around the world are asking the right questions. Inspirational carbon offset purchase programmes from Stripe, Shopify, Microsoft, Milkywire and others are raising the bar, weighing these choices and sharing their findings.
It’s a seller’s market right now, but more data and choice will give rise to buyer discrimination and rising standards. Everyone can learn from these examples at home and at work: ask your own questions about offsets, suggest your employer considers a progressive offset strategy and education programme and treat the next article you read about what’s wrong with the offset market as a call to action to help put it right.
The future of carbon offsets will ultimately be forged by buyers, sellers and stewards who pay proper attention, take nothing for granted and are committed to helping create a vibrant and vital economy capable of scaling to meet our global needs.
We’re working hard to bring that future forward, asking hard questions and taking great care along the way.
