What’s the real difference? Don’t offsets also do the same thing?

If I emit 5g of CO2 but purchase similar in offsets - the offsets have to achieve a reduction of 5g unless something like a scam is going on.

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jampa 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

"Carbon offsetting is like saying to your husband or spouse: ‘I’m going to cheat, but I’ll buy you a diamond ring.’"

Sometimes, the carbon offsets are from projects that would be built anyway, and there is a lot of sketchiness all around.

It might be better than nothing or it might empower companies to pollute more and then say, "Look, we are offsetting all this!"

	▲	shaftway 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I like how your example still involves moving carbon around.

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foota 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some of these offsets are of dubious quality. E.g., I think some of these offsets are from _not_ doing something that you might have otherwise done, but maybe you wouldn't have done that thing regardless.

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colechristensen 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Some of those "avoided" things can be as dumb as having a parcel of forested land that you didn't chop down. Those trees were already there and claims that they might not have otherwise been without a little credit money are questionable.

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simianwords 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Interesting. Maybe the offset should be the expected value of co2 that would not be emitted after accounting for probability. It doesn’t seem like a scam fundamentally.

	▲	notatoad 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		i think that's exactly it, it's not fundamentally a scam, but it's not as simple as 1:1 "5g in, 5g out" because there's always some formula to calculate how much carbon has been "saved" by the company selling the offsets taking whatever actions they are taking. which gives the companies selling offsets a financial motive to maximize that calculation, and in some cases does lead to outright scams. the classic example is landowners selling offsets for the mature forests on their land - that's good! and incentivising the preservation of forests is good! but that forest already existed, and has existed for hundreds of years, so does it really make sense that some company can count it against their carbon emissions and claim to be "net zero" just because they paid a landowner to not cut it down? it makes the whole concept of offsets less of an overall pure good than emitters simply not emitting carbon in the first place, because that is actually a very simple and clear calculation.

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p1mrx 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The biggest problem with carbon offsets is that they're not pinned to a particular time of day.

If you buy a 1 GWh block of wind/solar energy for a month, you're not doing anything to supply clean energy when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing.

"24/7 carbon free" means increasing the time resolution from 1 month to 1 hour, and funding projects that deliver clean energy when you're actually using it. This includes stuff like batteries, nuclear, and geothermal.

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stocksinsmocks 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That assumes the seller of the offset actually offset something rather than created an opaque paper trail that makes it impossible to know if they did anything at all. I don’t think Carbon market makers have a good track record.