Carbon credits

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to Green World! Today we're talking about an industry that has expanded massively in the past few years. Carbon credits are one of the measures that companies are taking to reduce CO2 emissions.

But how does it actually work? The companies that sell carbon credits fund projects to protect an area of forest or rainforest from deforestation. They then calculate how much carbon dioxide emissions they have saves by protecting this area. This means they can now sell 'negative carbon emissions' to companies. In this way, the companies are funding the protection of said area and are causing negative emissions while doing so meaning that the company can still emit greenhouse gases but can claim to be net zero. One carbon credit is basically the permission to emit one ton of CO2. This is good for the company as well as they are able to advertise as sustainable at a relatively low cost to actually reducing their emissions. And it means that the rainforests like the Amazon are protected. This industry expanded greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic: in 2021 150 million credits were sold at a total cost of 1.3 billion dollars.

This all sounds good. Maybe too good? In reality, there are problems. Probably the biggest problem is calculation errors. If a project overestimates how much carbon it is saving, intentionally or not, then they can sell more credits. Not only is this a money-making machine, it also means that companies are falsely under the impression that they are allowed to emit more. Overestimations of up to 400% so 4x the actual amount of carbon have been found in studies and investigations. These credits are called "phantom credits" because they don't actually exist. Another problem, that is very similar, is companies 'protecting' an area that isn't actually at risk in the first place. The idea of credits is to save rainforests from deforestation, but if these rainforests aren't actually at risk then it's kind of useless. Sellers can make millions because they don't even have to do any protecting. Tying into this is the fact that there is no reliable way of knowing if a credit is legit or just a scam. A study looking into a selection of projects determined that over 60 million credits didn't actually have any positive effect on the environment. One of the world's biggest sellers had 94% of their credits determined useless. These sellers are obviously denying all claims by scientists and journalists. There have even been allegations of the mistreatment of native people by the projects active in their areas. One final fundamental problem is that companies now have an excuse not to reduce emissions by buying credits.

We hope you found this post interesting. Vote here to decide on next year's monthly post. See you next week!

Your Green World Blog Team💚

Sources:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230824150717.htm
https://carboncredits.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-understanding-carbon-credits/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe

Images:
Title image: This image is owned by a blog editor.
"CO2 emissions", owned by Ian Britton (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
“Rainforest”, owned by Jo (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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