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Everybody seems to be writing long, thoughtful articles on offsets these days. Greenwire (subs. req’d) has a good piece on what Live Earth did to offset its emissions. Here’s what they say:
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GLOBE-Net News has just published an article, “Searching for true Carbon offsets” that makes many of the same points I have been trying to make, only better. Here is the opening:

The fast-growing carbon offset industry is at risk of being discredited as operators struggle to prove their offsets are actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is unease in the sector amid growing evidence that some carbon offset schemes are of dubious value. Some analysts believe too readily available offsets actually discourage companies from making the investments needed to reduce their greenhouse gas outputs. While the idea of purchasing credits to be ‘carbon neutral’ seems attractive, many are discovering that their dollars have not been well spent. There is an urgent need for a credible standard to differentiate the good from the bad.

Here are more highlights from the article:

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One reason I began posting my Rules of Carbon Offsets is a dubious program by the California utility PG&E called ClimateSmart, which is supposed to allow PG&E customers to become “climate neutral.”

This program actually manages to violate Rules 0, 1, and 2 all at once! It really makes clear why offsets are bastardized emissions reductions — and why trees are an especially dubious offset.

This picture graces the “Our Projects” page of the ClimateSmart website. The caption reads “Photo of van Eck Forest, courtesy of Pacific Forest Trust.” Well that burns Rule 1 and 2 — no trees, and certainly not trees in a California forest comprising half your offset portfolio. (This forestry offset is particularly outrageous, as we will see at the end of this post.)

Worse, what PG&E is offering to do is offset customer’s greenhouse gas emissions generated from their electricity purchases and natural gas consumption.

The $64,000 question is — Why doesn’t PG&E just sell renewable power to its customers? Remember Rule Zero of Offsets:

Before you pay others to reduce their emissions on your behalf, you need to do everything reasonably possible to reduce your own emissions first. As the saying goes, “Physician, Heal Thyself” before presuming to heal other people.

How does Rule Zero apply here? Consider what PG&E says:

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Offsets are trendy. Just as Climate Progress is running columns on carbon offsets, Tom Friedman has a column on the subject, “Live Bad, Go Green.” Since his is only for N. Y. Times subscribers, I’ll reprint the key parts of it here. His bottom line: He buys offsets, but is ambivalent about them.

He opens by citing a London furniture designer who

heaped particular scorn on programs that enable people to offset their excessive carbon emissions by funding green projects elsewhere. “Who really checks that it’s being done?” he asked. And how much difference does it really make?

Here’s the heart of the piece:

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Before you pay others to reduce their emissions on your behalf, you need to do everything reasonably possible to reduce your own emissions first. As the saying goes, “Physician, Heal Thyself” before presuming to heal other people.

This rule is so obvious I almost forgot it. And yet many people, including Google and PG&E, don’t seem to get it.

The whole point of offsets is not to make you feel good, and it’s not to allow you to continue polluting as much as you want (by, say, supporting new coal plants or other dirty forms of power). Offsets are cheap and in some sense bastardized emissions reductions (more on this in a future post).

In general, the point of offsets is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and specifically to allow you to offset any emissions that are left over after you have cleaned up your own act — or to offset emissions from one-time events such as concerts.

While the other rules apply to offsets themselves, and thus can be independently verified in a fairly rigorous fashion, this rule applies to a company’s — or person’s — whole range of polluting activities and requires a judgment call. What is “everything reasonably possible”?

Google’s plan to burn coal and then buy offsets won’t make the cut. PG&E’s plan to sell offsets to people (trees, no less!) — rather than selling them green power — just makes no sense.

Trees are terrific in every way but one: They make lousy carbon offsets. That was the point of the First Rule of Carbon Offsets. But a number of comments at the Grist blog, and some media queries, have led me include two rare exceptions: certified urban trees and certified tropical forest preservation. The word “certified” is key in both cases.

For these two rare cases, I would allow trees to comprise no more than 10% of an overall offset portfolio (which should be heavily weighted toward efficiency, renewables, fuel switching, and perhaps carbon capture and storage). Also, their offset value should probably be discounted over time (because urban trees are unlikely to be permanent and tropical forest accounting is quite uncertain).

Let’s start with urban trees. I am a big fan of those — I have coauthored a Technology Review article and blogged on how shade trees in particular reduce the urban heat island, providing direct cooling as well as reduced air conditioning use. A good article on urban trees as offsets is here.

I would especially support urban trees that were 1) planted as shade trees and 2) part of an overall heat island mitigation strategy that included lighter color roofs. That said, I am unaware of any tree offset program that actually focuses on urban trees — primarily because they tend to be more expensive to plant and more expensive to maintain and monitor then trees outside of cities, which can be planted in large number in a small space (rather than individually over a large city).

The tricky part of urban tree planting is to set up a certification system that ensures these trees are permanent — and not, say, cut down by some landowner expanding their house or lost in a storm. I expect these will be rare offsets.

Now to tropical forest preservation, which is clearly both important and difficult. These are rare offsets for two reasons.

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Everybody loves trees. They are so popular as offsets they even make Wikipedia’s definition:

When one is unable or unwilling to reduce one’s own emissions, Carbon offset is the act of reducing (”offsetting”) greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere. A well-known example is the planting of trees to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from personal air travel.

But does planting trees reduce global warming? Not in most places on the Earth. The Carnegie Institution’s Ken Caldeira summarized the result of a major 2005 study (detailed below) this way:

To plant forests to mitigate climate change outside of the tropics is a waste of time.

Why? Because forest canopies are relatively dark, compared to what they replace outside the tropics–grass, croplands, or snowfields–and so they absorb more of the sun’s heating rays that fall on them. That negates the “carbon sink” benefit trees have soaking up carbon dioxide. Worse, the study found that planting a large number of trees in high latitudes would “probably have a net warming effect on the Earth’s climate.” Ouch!

So what about an offset project involving tree planting in the tropics where water evaporating from trees increases cloudiness, which keeps the planet cool, according to models? Tropical-tree-planting offset projects suffer from a different problem:

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The first rule of Carbon Offsets is, you do not talk about Carbon Offsets.

Just kidding. This isn’t Fight Club, but I do aim to pick a fight with those overhyping offsets.

If a smart company like Google can seriously think it can go green by burning coal and then buying offsets – and if a smart company like PG&E is bragging about a new program that allows customers to offset their electricity emissions by planting trees (a dopey program I’ll blog about later) — then something is very wrong about the general understanding of offsets.

For those who want a basic introduction to offsets, Wikipedia has an excellent entry. I believe the more you know about and think about offsets, the less appealing they are, as these articles make clear.

No rules of the road exist for offsets. Until now. In subsequent posts, I will offer my own rules based on dozens of discussions over the past decade with environmentalists, energy experts, corporations, and would-be offsetters. I’ll post the first rule tomorrow, but it can be summed up in two words: No trees!