Those are the laws, I think.  It is fundamentally Conservation of Mass at work.

Now, I'm sure there are some "overhyped" offset schemes out there ... but we can count up their moles, can't we?

I do note, though, that proponents of quality criteria sometimes have an unfortunate tendency to frame their advice against a misleading strawman portrayal of offsets. I see a bit of that tendency creeping into the post above.

From the outset, the post is framed as a "fight against those overhyping offsets." Exhibit A is Google, a company that thinks it can go green by "burning coal and then buying offsets."

Does Google really think this? Not according to their own web site, where they place their offset purchase in the context of a multipronged approach to greenhouse gas abatement in which they stress renewable energy and efficiency. Historically, Google has actually been fairly leery of offsets, favoring instead direct investment in renewables, investment in basic R&D, and aggressive pursuit of efficiency. Google seems to have come to offsets only reluctantly -- in their words, as a temporary solution -- because offsets are the only tool available that will allow them to balance all of their emissions immediately. What's being overhyped?

Likewise, the notion that the author is offering "rules of the road" where none now exist is more than a bit of an exaggeration. Multiple industry-wide quality standards have been under development for a long time now. Several credible independent studies of the voluntary offset industry are in circulation. Is the work done? Not by a long shot. But there is tons of exciting activity in this area, and it deserves to be acknowledged.

Point being, there is room for lots of voices in this conversation, and I certainly welcome the addition of Romm's. But hopefully laying out the rules of the road won't mean steamrollering all nuance.

www.terrapass.com/blog

1.  No one has the right to destroy existing biological services that have a net effect of sequestering carbon.  In any economic systems modeling, one of the most important determinants of outcomes is who has which rights and resources at the beginning of the process.  If we recognize rights to destroy natural services, we are setting the course of net gains of carbon in the atmosphere without any marginal cost to the owner of those rights and, thus, no marginal revenue paid to those who might otherwise mitigate the effect.  We don't want that.

2.  A carbon tax is charged whenever carbon based fuel is extracted or converted to a form that is intended for fuel use.  (So, for instance, wood would be assessed as taxable as soon as it is cut and split or pelletized, and could become eligible for a rebate if it is later converted into another form that will not be burned.)  The rate of the tax shall be the estimated average cost of sequestering the amount of carbon fuel that is expected to be extracted or converted in the country in which the conversion or extraction is taking place, using the best available technology, plus an overhead factor to pay for the administration and monitoring associated with the tax system.  (It might due to divvy up the volume of sequestration by company rather than country, or by other bases.  The important concept is that the marginal cost of mitigation will likely increase as the volume of carbon per unit of time increases, so we don't want to use the cost of sequestering the first unit of carbon as the taxable amount applicable to the total amount of carbon fuel that will be ready for use in a given period, as that would tend to underestimate the true value of mitigating the total volume of pollution that would be released without mitigation.)

3.  End users of carbon fuels are immediately elligible for credits equal to, say, 80% of the amount of energy saved in a given operation (such as powering a machine or heating a building) compared to existing technology, to be recognized in each year of operation of the energy saving technology for the estimate life of the technology.  Think of it as a reverse depreciation schedule denominated in carbon credits.  Carbon credits are to be converted to currency according to the prevailing carbon tax rate in the year in question.  The amount of credits shall be N(1/(1-X)), where N is the number of carbon units in the fuel actually used that year and X is the rated fuel efficiency of the new technology as compared to the old (so, if the new technology uses two-thirds as much energy, X would be .67).  The reason for not allowing a 100% credit for carbon saved is to account for the tendency to do more with energy when it takes less energy to do a unit of work.  So, for instance, people raise their thermostats and leave the lights on more when more efficient heating and lighting is installed.  There is a name for this effect, named after a person, but I can't recall it at the moment.

4.  Carbon credits can also be earned by investing mitigation services that are not directly tied to energy using technology.  So, for instance, enhancing the carbon sequestering properties of soil, planting trees (sorry, Romm), or operating some sort of atmospheric carbon vacuum cleaner would qualify for credits and a rebate at the prevailing rate of the carbon tax in any given year.  However, these credits are only available according to the estimated amount of carbon sequestered b a given project in a given year.  So, if you plant seedlings in a temperate zone, you will get next to nothing for your investment for many years to come, but if you become the biochar wizard and stash lots of carbon today, you can cash in at once.