Analysis of the carbon offset projects used by top corporations including Delta, Gucci and ExxonMobil raises concerns around their emission cuts claims
Some of the world’s most profitable – and most polluting corporations – have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are “probably junk”, suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis.
Delta, Gucci, Volkswagen, ExxonMobil, Disney, easyJet, and Nestlé are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are “likely junk” or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog
Some of these companies no longer use CO2 offsets amid mounting evidence that carbon trading do not lead to the claimed emissions cuts – and in some cases may even cause environmental and social harms.
That’s incorrect. There are legitimate offsets, and bullshit ones. Let’s say you have an online business. You can’t control the energy consumption from leased servers, or tell UPS to use electric vehicles for delivery. The only way you can reduce your business’s footprint is by offsetting. By funding alternative energy harnessing devices like solar or wind, even devices that do not directly power your business, there is a measured carbon reduction by the production of those devices that can be subtracted from your business’s footprint. Offsetting like this is recognized by climate scientists as legitimate.
The bullshit ones have estimated offsets based on experimental averages. Planting trees to combat deforestation, for example, while good for the environment, do not provide a measured reduction to carbon in the atmosphere. Those estimates are not recognized as legitimate offsets by the scientific community, but are widely used in business due to lower cost of implementation.