What Are Carbon Offsets? Are They a Credible Climate Solution?
A debate has emerged about how much companies should be trying to shrink their carbon footprints before they offset what they deem to be unavoidable emissions.
Photographer: Guillem Sartorio/BloombergYou’ll hear lots of pledges from companies and governments to cut the greenhouse gases they release to “net zero.” That’s because they need to completely halt their release of carbon emissions to avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change. But how to get there? In many cases, it may prove too costly to go all the way to zero. That’s where the concept of carbon offsets comes in, though their use is controversial.
The idea is that when a company, government or individual releases greenhouse gases, they can pay someone else to remove an equivalent amount of climate pollution from the atmosphere. If, say, a company operates a fleet of diesel-powered trucks that generates 100 tons of carbon dioxide annually, it might pay a landowner to plant trees that absorb an equal amount of CO2. In theory, the trees cancel out — or offset — the impact of the trucks. The term has been used since the early days of environmental initiatives, such as in the 1970 US Clean Air Act, though it’s now applied more widely.