Granted, there are no doubt better, more productive ways to spend your money. One can wish for a reliable website that rates offsets/retirements in terms of bang for the buck. That would be highly valuable.

Heavy enough to force energy conservation and non-carbon based energy deployment

How heavy is enough? Enough to sequester, permanently, the excess carbon added to the active carbon cycle. It appears that $110–140 per tonne of carbon suffices; that’s $30–38 per tonne of CO2.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/ news/ september2008/ keith-carboncapture

white a link to technical materials at the bottom.

With costs this low, Joe could think about replacing a wedge of CCS with a wedge (or several) of air capture.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6294048.html

but I have no idea what the cost is.

So this is carbon offsets paying around 300 times the price of the asset.

Makes for expensive lipstick.

I’ve asked you recently to address this issue again. I serve on the advisory panel for thePG&E ClimateSmart program. I am impressed with how PG&E has taken great care to protect additionality.

At the same time, offsets are becoming a significant subject in terms of AB32 with more pressure recently to include offsets with fewer limitations as part of the Scoping Plan.

One approach our organization, Small Business California, has suggested in our Comments and testimony to CARB is for larger firms in CA to use “supply chain” offsets. For instance, Chevron could perhaps address their existing gas stations/convenience stores and claim credit ONLY where they can show additional verifiable savings BEYOND where current energy efficiency programs can affect usage. For instance, stretching existing EE using internet based continuous commissioning and real time controls may be a valid use of funds to support that added level of savings (approx 5-15%) beyond the norm.

[Hank — I’ll blog specifically on ClimateSmart next week, but I think my bottom line is probably clear to everyone. At a state, national, or global level — offsets must be kept to a minimum. If you have a credible, quantifiable means of reducing GHGs, then just put it in the cap!! At an individual level, I personally can’t recommend anybody waste their money on offsets.]

However, we should not tarnish offsets with such a broad stroke. There are good offsets and bad offsets. Just as a mad cow outbreak doesn’t convince people to give up beef forever, this shouldn’t convince people that offsets are valueless, but rather there should be better oversight, transparency, and standards governing them. Offsets will be key in bringing in markets that can’t be capped easily (agriculture, transportation, forestry) and will reduce costs for the overall system (which in these economic times, is very important as well).

For the North American market, one can only hope for better regulation, not unlike what the FDA does for the food industry. Cap-and-trade legislation will only raise their value and quality by providing eligibility to mandatory markets.

Of course, reductions should be made first in the home and at the point of generation, but offsets should be have a place at the table as well.

My own glib summary of the state of current research, based on numerous recent research studies published in Nature, Science, and similar, is that virtually every intact natural ecosystem sequesters carbon, and if disturbed, releases carbon. This has been specifically demonstrated in recent publications with regard to temperate forests.

The simplistic 2005 study that seems to provide the basis of your “First Rule of Carbon Offsets: No Trees”…
http://climateprogress.org/ 2007/ 06/ 29/ the-first-rule-of-carbon-offsets-no-trees/

…is really little more than a joke at this point. This useful rebuttal only scratches the surface of the problems with that study:
http://ecopreservationsociety.wordpress.com/ 2008/ 02/ 12/ does-reforestation-contribute-to-global-warming-a-second-look-at-the-livermore-study/

And there is much more robust, more recent work that contradicts it in detail,

I’m no lover of offsets - emissions reductions are vastly more important and reliable - and I certainly agree that there are real challenges in designing and enforcing meaningful offsets based on forest management scenarios.

But the problem with such offsets is not that temperate trees are not valuable in reducing global warming. It is really important to be clear about this:

Trees, tropical, temperate, and arboreal alike, and the bigger and older the better, provide vital and significant carbon sinks for the global climate.

[JR: You really need to read all the links before you post comments like this. Temperate trees are great things, but as climate offsets they are at best unquantifiable and at worst undependable. Let’s preserve them, definitely, but not at the expense of cutting industrial carbon emissions.]

http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com

Deborah

http://termlifeinsurance2.com