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.

Comments

El Niño & La Niña - what are they and what effects do they have?

Hello everyone, You've probably heard of El Niño and La Niña before. Especially El Niño has been discussed a lot recently in the media. El Niño and La Niña are part of a climate pattern found in the Pacific Ocean that occurs roughly every two to seven years. However there is no real regularity or predictability further into the future. They affect global weather patterns and economies. So first of all, let's cover what is actually happening here. In normal circumstances trade winds blow across the Pacific from South America to Asia. This pushes warm water from South America to Asia meaning that the ocean is a lot cooler off the west coast of the Americas compared to the east coast of Asia. The cold water off the coast of the Americas comes from the ocean's depths and is filled with nutrients. During El Niño those driving trade winds become weaker or even stop entirely. Scientists haven't work...

Announcement: Factfile

This image is owned by a blog editor.

Ozone layer

Hi everyone, What even is ozone? And the ozone layer? Where does the hole in the ozone layer come from and what does it mean? Is it dangerous? What can be done? Often the ozone-talk can be complicated and confusing, keeping an overview is hard and understanding all the problems always difficult. Let us break it down a bit for you: What is the ozone layer? We'll start with the basics: The ozone layer is part of the stratosphere, which is the second layer of the Earth's atmosphere, between 10 and 50 km above the Earth's surface and made up of protective gases. One of these protective gases is ozone. There is not much ozone in the atmosphere, only 0.3 molecule of ozone per 1 million molecules of air. This is because ozone is chemically unstable and only forms when ultra violet radiation (UV light) hits oxygen and breaks the bonds between the atoms. It fact it is so unstable that even when it has formed, it breaks down again relatively quickly. This leads to ozone turning back ...

April Top Tips: ten tips for environmentally friendly travel

Hi Everyone! We haven't been very present on the blog again recently but we are back today with ten top tips for environmentally friendly travel. Most forms of travel over long distances (unless you are willing to put in a lot of physical effort) use fossil fuels and are generally not good for our planet. So today we will be giving you a few tips which although won't mean that your travel is 100% planet friendly, will be a good start to doing as much as you can. Your Green World Blog Team💚 1. Use trains and boats rather than planes where possible Planes are awful for the environment. They are, however, extremely practical and so easy to use, cheap...It's hard to avoid them! They are so quick too so you don't have to spend as much time travelling. However, they are really bad for the environment. For example, you could fly once to Edinburgh from Heathrow for the same carbon dioxide levels as driving to Edinburgh 336 times! 2. Fly...

Hummingbirds

Hello, Today, we're talking about an amazing group of birds that are known for their colours and the speed they beat their wings. That's right: hummingbirds! General Hummingbirds live in North and South America. They are some of the smallest and most colourful birds in the world. There are about 330 different kinds. Their name comes from the humming sound that their wings make. They eat nectar and insects using their long bills. Some species migrate during the winter. Flight The wings of a hummingbird beat so fast that the hummingbird can hover in one place and can fly forwards, backwards or sideways. Small hummingbirds beat their wings about 70-80 times per second. During courtship displays or when chasing rivals, their wings can beat up to 200 times per second. Feeding Hummingbirds eat the nectar from the insides of flowers. They hover in front of a flower and put their long and slender bills inside to suck up the nectar. This prov...

The limits of the Earth - the planetary boundary model

Hi everyone, So today we're talking about a model that was introduced in 2009 and has offered a new perspective to thinking about environmental issues. The planetary boundary model has 9 boundaries, each has a safe zone. Once the safe zone is exceeded, the stable conditions on our planet are considered at risk, and there can be severe and possibly irreversible changes. The nine boundaries are considered separate however, they greatly affect each other. Novel Entities describes the introduction and accumulation of man-made novel chemical compounds. These include pesticides, nuclear waste and microplastics. Stratospheric Ozone Depletion refers to the depletion of the ozone layer which was a major problem in the 90s. Atmospheric Aerosol Loading is air particle pollution. Ocean Acidification is self-explanatory. The boundary Biochemical Flows is composed of two separate boundaries; nitrogen and phosphorus. Both of the ele...

Veganism or vegetarianism - are they really sustainable?

Hello everyone Does veganism come with health issues? Is it sustainable? And does vegetarianism change anything? - We're going to be comparing three different diet types: veganism, vegetarianism, and a mixed diet, in multiple categories. This post is structured into the following sections: human rights health area needed animal rights greenhouse gas emissions Which diet is the best? Image and text sources Warning: There are no graphic images in this post. However, in the 'human rights' and 'animal rights' sections, there are descriptions of physical and mental abuse towards both humans and animals. Skip those sections, if you know you can't deal with that. Human rights This may seem like an unrelated topic at first, but in many industries, the rights of people in poorer countries are abused because it's cheaper for the compa...

19.07.2020: Animal of the week: Honey Bees

Hi everyone, This week's animal is the honey bee. Enjoy! General Information An average honeybee hive is made up of one queen, hundreds of male drones and thousands of female workers. If the queen bee dies then a new queen is created. The workers select a young larva and feed it with a special food called ‘royal jelly’. The ‘royal jelly’ makes the larva grow into a fertile queen. Queens live for several years but the workers only live for five or six weeks. An average worker will make a twelfth of a tee spoon of honey during her entire life. Drones are turned out of the hive and left to die in Autumn. In the summer months, the queen bee is very busy, she can lay up to 2500 eggs in a single day. How they affect the world around them Honey bees are very important for flowers, fruit and vegetables. This comes from the fact that they are pollinators. They help the plants by transferring pollen between male and female parts, meaning the plants can g...

Mental Health: The benefits of being in nature

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's post! Today we thought we would talk to you on the benefits of being in nature for your mental health. This has been a much talked about subject recently, so it felt fitting that we would do a post about it. Fresh air and exercise have long been used as ways to make you feel better, whether you are suffering from a physical ailment or issues with your mental health. Just spending time outside is known to generate many positive emotions, including happiness and feeling calmer just to name a few. Over longer periods of time, it is shown to help with anxiety and depression. Although it obviously can't solve the underlying problems, it can definitely help us. However, it is less known how vital it is that the nature is 'high quality' in order to gain these effects to their full extent. This 'high quality' nature is often litter-free and clean, both of which are important if y...

Energy comparison: solar (PV) panels

Hi everyone, Today I'm looking into the first on a long list of energy sources: solar (PV) panels. Are they actually sustainable and could they become our main energy source in the near future? After all, enough energy from the sun reaches the earth in 90 minutes to cover the entire world's energy consumption for a whole year! How they work There are a couple of ways to transform energy from the sun into electricity. The one we are looking at today is solar panels also known as solar photovoltaic technology. Photovoltaic (PV) technology is the key to solar panels. A solar panel is made of many PV cells. A single PV cell will produce 1-2 watts of power. They are very thin and are normally protected by glass and/or plastics. This is the best explanation I could find (click here for the source): When the semiconductor is exposed to light, it absorbs the light’s energy and transfers it to negatively charged particles in the material calle...

Green World

Search This Blog