David---Your introductory statement copied below should include the major flaw of offsets: the frequent lack of additionality. "Carbon reductions" via offsets can be very real and still have an adverse impact on emissions. Because many forest reductions would have occurred anyway without offsets, it allows industries to avoid their own …
David---Your introductory statement copied below should include the major flaw of offsets: the frequent lack of additionality. "Carbon reductions" via offsets can be very real and still have an adverse impact on emissions. Because many forest reductions would have occurred anyway without offsets, it allows industries to avoid their own reductions so the net impact is that offsets can increase emissions. Verification is just one of the problems.
"But the model only works in practice if the carbon reductions represented by carbon offsets are real — verifiable and verified. Cullenward and Victor argue that they rarely are, and furthermore, that the incentives created by the programs themselves work against reliable verification. Large-scale offsets programs inevitably spark a race to the bottom."
There is a need for assessing the political economy behind offsets (please explore and write more). The growth is accelerating in this perverse policy. BP just bought the biggest offsets broker in California, Carney has a group of major companies lined up, the airlines CORSIA agreement will expand offsets, and brokers, lawyers, forestry consultants, agriculture interests all see a path that is not good for the climate. EDF, IETA and many others are focused on getting the Paris Accord Article 6 rules approved next November at the COP 26 in Scotland. This will give the veneer of legitimacy to this unfortunate trend. It is no surprise that Davos was the initiator of the trillion trees program.
Finally, the real damage from expansion of this policy will be in developing countries. Article 6 rules will be essentially the same as the Kyoto Protocol offsets program which was a failure. Around 85% of the Kyoto offset projects could not demonstrate reduced emissions. The Kyoto offset price sank to 40 cents/ton/CO2 which were grabbed up by EU industries under the EU ETS cap and trade and submitted for compliance.
PS after a very long day, just wanted to say how much I appreciate what you've written here. There is such a long history on this issue, but every time somebody puts an offset on a blockchain it's like "wow check out this innovation" instead of "have I seen this before?" We have seen this before. And each time we repeat the experiment we get the same result.
I'll let the good Dr. Volts speak for himself, but I suspect the "verifiable and verified" bit was meant to encompass additionality concerns. We cover all this in the book, including the experience with CDM, how offsets contributed to the 10-year struggle to turn the EU ETS around, and the awful ugliness that is the CORSIA process.
(One of the problems with offsets is all the terminology — and the fact that counterfactual logic with additionality and leakage literally doesn't have a proper verb tense. Turtles all the way down!)
It's common to assume that "verification" includes assessing additionality, but that's a misunderstanding. There is no way to "verify" a counter-factual baseline - it's basically a policy decision that then has to be taken as a given from then on out.
David---Your introductory statement copied below should include the major flaw of offsets: the frequent lack of additionality. "Carbon reductions" via offsets can be very real and still have an adverse impact on emissions. Because many forest reductions would have occurred anyway without offsets, it allows industries to avoid their own reductions so the net impact is that offsets can increase emissions. Verification is just one of the problems.
"But the model only works in practice if the carbon reductions represented by carbon offsets are real — verifiable and verified. Cullenward and Victor argue that they rarely are, and furthermore, that the incentives created by the programs themselves work against reliable verification. Large-scale offsets programs inevitably spark a race to the bottom."
There is a need for assessing the political economy behind offsets (please explore and write more). The growth is accelerating in this perverse policy. BP just bought the biggest offsets broker in California, Carney has a group of major companies lined up, the airlines CORSIA agreement will expand offsets, and brokers, lawyers, forestry consultants, agriculture interests all see a path that is not good for the climate. EDF, IETA and many others are focused on getting the Paris Accord Article 6 rules approved next November at the COP 26 in Scotland. This will give the veneer of legitimacy to this unfortunate trend. It is no surprise that Davos was the initiator of the trillion trees program.
Finally, the real damage from expansion of this policy will be in developing countries. Article 6 rules will be essentially the same as the Kyoto Protocol offsets program which was a failure. Around 85% of the Kyoto offset projects could not demonstrate reduced emissions. The Kyoto offset price sank to 40 cents/ton/CO2 which were grabbed up by EU industries under the EU ETS cap and trade and submitted for compliance.
PS after a very long day, just wanted to say how much I appreciate what you've written here. There is such a long history on this issue, but every time somebody puts an offset on a blockchain it's like "wow check out this innovation" instead of "have I seen this before?" We have seen this before. And each time we repeat the experiment we get the same result.
I'll let the good Dr. Volts speak for himself, but I suspect the "verifiable and verified" bit was meant to encompass additionality concerns. We cover all this in the book, including the experience with CDM, how offsets contributed to the 10-year struggle to turn the EU ETS around, and the awful ugliness that is the CORSIA process.
(One of the problems with offsets is all the terminology — and the fact that counterfactual logic with additionality and leakage literally doesn't have a proper verb tense. Turtles all the way down!)
It's common to assume that "verification" includes assessing additionality, but that's a misunderstanding. There is no way to "verify" a counter-factual baseline - it's basically a policy decision that then has to be taken as a given from then on out.