More rules of the road for offsets: Common sense is good

Measure, monitor, reduce, offset

Posted by Adam Stein (Guest Contributor) at 11:02 AM on 13 Jul 2007

Haven't had enough on offsets yet? Good. Romm's zeroth rule of carbon offsets is that you should "do everything reasonably possible to reduce your own emissions" before buying offsets. At first blush, this reads like a memo from Obviousland, a staunch statement in favor of apple pie. Pretty much every marketer of carbon offsets heavily stresses that offset purchases should go hand-in-hand with serious attempts at conservation, and I certainly agree.

So far, so good. But the rest of the post serves as a lesson in what can happen when common sense hardens into ideology. After making a bunch of points about how the worst thing you can do is actually feel good about purchasing offsets, Romm offers up Exhibit A of the wrong way to go about buying offsets: Google.

Google is an odd choice of environmental villain for a couple of reasons. The first is that, though the company is not necessarily a green angel, it does appear to be sincere about its efforts to grapple with climate change. Without even hitting, well, Google to look up the info, I can think of a half dozen initiatives the company has undertaken to directly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Some are splashy, like putting up the largest U.S. solar array on a corporate campus. Others are far less sexy but probably more important, such as pushing for industry-wide power supply standards that could save billions in wasted kilowatt-hours per year.

More importantly, Google just isn't a carbon offset kind of company. The cultural bent of the place is to find innovative, do-it-yourself solutions, such as their funky R&D project to develop vehicle-to-grid technology for a fleet of plug-in hybrids. My overriding sense with Google is that they came to offsets only reluctantly after realizing that they didn't have any other options for achieving near-term carbon neutrality. Their own announcement describes the offset purchase as a strictly "temporary" part of a three-part strategy that puts efficiency and renewables first.

So what's the problem? According to Romm, the offset purchase is invalid because the company "runs on coal power." This is an extremely loaded way of saying that the company uses electricity, and in America electricity mostly comes from coal. Further, because Google is growing, it is using more electricity than it did in the past. Romm isn't even accusing Google of using electricity inefficiently. They just use it, period, and this is bad.

OK, fair enough, but where are we meant to go with this? How does the zeroth rule apply? Presumably Google isn't going to stop building server farms. Would the world be better off if Google didn't make an offset purchase? And aren't offsets that support renewable energy production a fairly direct way to address the very infrastructural problem -- coal-generated electricity -- that Romm is unhappy about?

My point here is not to open up a debate on where Google should site its server farms -- a decision no doubt influenced by dozens of factors of considerable importance to the company -- but rather to suggest that such debates are likely to be fruitless. The zeroth "rule" is better formulated as a common sense guide: strive to reduce your carbon footprint in as many ways as is practicable, and seek continuous improvements over time. Measure and monitor, and as your direct emissions shrink, so too will any need for offsets.

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An analytical and adaptive process is better

Rote rules are appropriate when the parameters and objectives of a problem are well-defined, well understood, and organized in a linear cause and effect relationship. However, when it comes to choosing the most appropriate collection of actions, both individual and organizational, we find ourselves in very different circumstances. For that reason, a dynamic and analytical systems approach to decision-making is in order.

As I've mentioned a couple times already, what we are contemplating when we discuss the efficacy of carbon offset, carbon tax, cap and trade, cleaner fuels, energy conservation, and other choices are complex economic decisions. It only makes sense to model them as such. So long as we continue to avoid decision-making guidelines that can translate a diverse mix of expected outcomes at various points in time and to present values denominated by a common unit of measure, we will continue to resort to overgeneralization, emotional appeals,ideological edicts, and other logical shortcomings that are neither persuasive nor ineffective.

by Rune at 12:08 PM on 13 Jul 2007

By the way

BioD and I posted on similar topics at nearly the same time. Apologies for any redundancy. I'm sure readers would be glad never to hear the word "offset" again.

www.terrapass.com/blog

by Adam Stein at 12:29 PM on 13 Jul 2007

Why bother with offsets?

Why don't these people just donate their money to a suitable conservation organization? They can feel good about that.

Why don't they just donate their money to a new environmentally friendly business trying to enter the market? They can feel good about that.

Why don't these people just donate money -- or better yet, time -- to someone trying to a non-profit trying to set up methane recovery systems for communities or plant trees or whatever?

Why don't large businesses just finance reforestation projects and then brag about it in their advertising literature?

Why doesn't someone find a way for small investors to pool their resources and fund alternative energy projects, perhaps eventually receiving, but not necessarily expecting, a small return?

Why call this transfer of money an "offset"? Why do we need a middleman?

Instead, try a social marketing blitz -- free of any connection to "tree huggers" -- designed to create a modern (urban?) version of the Aldo Leopold's land ethic. It has to be done with style... no lectures, no humiliation, no Hollywood personalities.

by wiscidea at 1:20 PM on 13 Jul 2007

I really want a clear list of carbon offsets...

Does the following list cover most potential carbon offsets?

(1) subsidizing renewable energy: wind, photovolatics, other solar, biomass

(2) purchasing old-growth forests or other high-carbon ecosystems

(3) financing landfill methane abatement or dairy farm methane abatement

(4) constructing nuclear power plants

(5) planting trees in TROPICAL areas

(6) re-establishing grass/forbland in TEMPERATE areas

(7) constructing hydroelectric dams where they do not harm eecosystems

(8) replacing transport via semi with transport via rail

(9) subsidizing public transit projects

(10) providing farmers with RoundUp Ready seeds and RoundUp so they do not have to cultivate to control weeds

(11) providing farmers with seeds (GMO or non-GMO) for crops resistant to pests, so we do not have to burn so much fossil fuel synthesizing pesticides

(12) funding programs that promote and help farmers adopt organic farming methods

Is that it? Does everyone agree that these are the options?

I realize it is a complex issue, but it would be easier to understand and appreciate its value if we have a clear list of caron offsets for discussion. Part of my concern, I believe, is that as far as I know one either builds wind farms (so why not just invest in a wind farm) or plants trees (which is of questionable value AS AN OFFSET).

by wiscidea at 1:34 PM on 13 Jul 2007

You missed the best offset of them all

The most cost effective and scalable carbon offset investment opportunity is to invest in reducing the massively wasteful common uses of fossil fuels, such as heating, cooling, and lighting older buildings, rather than trying to build new energy generation facilities or attempting to scrub carbon out of the atmosphere after the fact. The impact is more immediate than cultivating biological services and a dollar invested in reducing waste generally goes many times farther than a dollar spent on undoing the consequences of burning carbon based fuels are building new infrastructure to generate electricity, isolate hydrogen, etc. It just blows my mind how caught up in the new fuel frenzy and carbon sucking schemes everyone is, while the simple path toward massive and immediate conservation gets relatively little attention. Yes, we will want to have cleaner fuel sources in the future--and it would be great to have them now--but it took us about a century to build the current, relatively more primitive energy infrastructure we rely upon now, and it will take many decades and a tremendous investment to replace it, especially given the current state of technology and the financial risks of investing in manufacturing what will soon be obsolete energy generation products.

Before someone argues that energy conservation is not an offset, let me point out that it is if you are investing in someone else's energy conservation to offset your own energy use. Why would you not simply invest in your own efficiency? It may be that you already have and it is a better investment to pick off the low hanging fruit of someone else's energy wasting assets before making further improvements to your own.

by Rune at 2:20 PM on 13 Jul 2007

Types of offsets

Hi wiscidea,

There are hundreds of different types of offset projects. The CDM has approved over 200 project methodologies, and even that isn't comprehensive. Here's a web site with more info on the CDM:

http://cdmpipeline.org/cdm-projects-type.htm

On the other hand, several of the items on your list are not eligible as a source of offsets. For example, there are no offsets from nuclear power. I'm not certain about 8 through 12 on your list, actually, although they are at least conceptually similar to certain types of offsets.

You ask why purchase offsets vs. make a donation to an NGO or invest in a renewable energy startup. These activities are basically apples and oranges. People are free to do any or all of these things, based on their means and goals. The exact differences between these activities are the subject for another blog post.

www.terrapass.com/blog

by Adam Stein at 2:20 PM on 13 Jul 2007

THANKS!

Now we're getting somewhere, especially if you click here...

http://cdmpipeline.org/cdm-projects-type.htm#4

I'll try to come up with additional, hopefully intelligent, questions to acquire a better understanding of the issue.

For example, palm oil solid waste? Is it really a good idea to do anything to further promote or encourage the palm oil industry? It is not good for the environment and not good for our health...

http://cspinet.org/new/200506021.html

An effort to fund clean-up of an ongoing industry's waste is essentially a subsidy for the industry, conceals part of the problems they cause, and could actually create a new industry dependent on the first one! Just a theory. Any opinions?

by wiscidea at 2:50 PM on 13 Jul 2007
[ Parent ]

Subsidy?

An effort to fund clean-up of an ongoing industry's waste is essentially a subsidy for the industry, conceals part of the problems they cause, and could actually create a new industry dependent on the first one! Just a theory. Any opinions?

That issue turns on the matter of rights. If the industry has a right to pollute or waste at a given level, then paying them to reduce their waste or pollution below that level in return for carbon emissions credits of your own is a legitimate investment that should lead to a desirable outcome, assuming there is a carbon emissions cap that is meaningful (as was not the case when the Kyoto driven market collapsed, for example). However, if the industry does not have the right to waste or pollute at the present level, possibly due to regulations for efficiency or emissions levels, then, yes, you would be subsidizing them to due what they are already required to do under the law.

This assignment of initial rights is probably the most important single issue in all analysis of carbon trading schemes (or any other economic scheme meant to guide investments and changes in behavior for the social good). Historically, wildlife, water, air, and most things we would call nature have been part of the public domain in the U.S.--even when they traverse or contact private property. The guiding principle has been that we are all free to do a little dumping and extracting in this public domain so long as the overall detrimental impact of individual actions is minimal or immeasurable. With a rising population and increasing energy use, many activities that once met the standard of doing no significant harm are now having a substantial negative impact when taken cumulatively (and in many cases, when assessed individually due to the more fragile state of "nature" in certain cases). Thus, the recent trend in "takings" disputes toward compensating property owners for abiding regulations necessary to prevent them from doing significant damage to the public's commonly held natural resources represents a major transfer of rights from the public to private parties without commensurate compensation to the public, even though the leaders of this movement claim just the opposite. In my opinion, it is a major mistake, which we cannot afford, to let that trend continue, but the private property trumps all interest groups seem to be gaining the upper hand at the moment.

by Rune at 3:27 PM on 13 Jul 2007

Subsidy?

Subsidy: a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive.

Yes, I believe that anyone helping the palm oil industry mitigate its waste problems allow that industry to be more competitive and prevent more-responsible and/or better industries, which might have to charge a higher price for their product, from succeeding.

Perhaps you'd rather call it "enabling" or "aiding and abetting". Just because their activity is not an "official" crime, does not mean it is benign and a good idea to support it. Please pardon my inability to use precise legal language. Such terms are often used metaphorically, I think, by us common folk. It is sometimes the only way to get our point across.

by wiscidea at 3:44 PM on 13 Jul 2007

I'm with your, there, Wiscidea

Wiscidea, I am arguing that wiping out natural habitat without offsetting habitat restoration (which is of questionable value in the medium to long run) and other impact mitigation measures should be a crime, whether or not it is recognized as such in business and government circles of the modern era. Where it might have been possible to plow or pave significant tracts of land in the past without dangerous implications for the balance of nature in the past, we are contributing to a significant die off today in many, many ways. That is why, at the end of last month, suggested that one baseline rule for creating conditions for meaningful carbon reduction schemes should include:

"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."

I would extend that thinking to protect any other natural resources or services characterized by scarcity. It's not OK to harm or destroy these without paying those affected, or their agents and representatives, so that they can compensate for the harm and destruction. Further, it is important that such payments for the level of damage and destruction that is to be tolerated be used to actually address the health, safety, and resilience of natural systems upon which all human and non-human well being is based.

As for formal versus informal language, I am not trying to put on airs, I am just making a point of being formal at the moment as emotions seem to be running rather high and I'd rather have a productive discussion about the many important considerations surrounding carbon emissions and climate destabilization than risk pissing someone off with an unguarded remark that reflects my feelings rather than my thinking regarding the matters at hand. I don't see any reason for you to apologize for writing as you please--quite effectively, I might add.

by Rune at 5:29 PM on 13 Jul 2007

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