The second rule of carbon offsets: Two rare exceptions to rule one

Emphasis on the 'rare'

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 4:39 PM on 03 Jul 2007

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 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 percent 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 effect, providing direct cooling as well as reduced air conditioning use. A good article on urban trees as offsets is here (PDF).

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, 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.

First, the whole point of the current generation of offsets is to sell people something cheap -- they're going for well under $10 a ton of carbon dioxide. As I will discuss in a subsequent post, nobody is going to buy an offset in a country without a carbon cap that is more expensive than the market price for an emission reduction in a country with a carbon cap, since that represents certified (i.e. highest quality) reductions.

But genuine tropical forest preservation is not cheap. In a recent study (PDF), McKinsey put the cost at some 30 euros per ton of CO2 saved. That is some 40 dollars a ton, which is more than the current price of CO2 on the European market and far more than most people are willing to pay for offsets.

The second problem is one I laid out before:

How can we be sure that the project is resulting in a net increase in tropical trees? Imagine planting 1,000 acres of trees in Brazil, where the full extent of annual deforestation is not known precisely. How do we know that an extra 1000 acres won't be chopped down somewhere else in the country?

Until countries with tropical forests join an international greenhouse gas treaty and are subject to rigorous verification strategies, tree-related offset projects will not deliver guaranteed, quantifiable benefits.

You must address this "leakage" problem with a country-wide certification system. Reuters has just reported on a forthcoming UN report on this very subject, "Reduced Emissions from Deforestation" (RED):

RED schemes would be run via national carbon accounting and verification, rather than being project-based. Remote sensing technology and "ground truthing" checks would verify reductions and monitor their "additionality" (a net reduction) and "leakage" (man-made damage to forest carbon stores).

Project-based forest preservation, which is how offsets have typically been conceived, is no good. You must do genuine certification, but again, this won't be cheap and thus is likely to be rather rare as an offset. Indeed as a commenter notes: "[F]or this (and several other reasons), forest carbon projects have been quite limited relative to all the other types of offset projects."

So in the vast majority of cases the first rule of offsets applies: No trees.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For story: The second rule of carbon offsets: Two rare exceptions to rule one
23 Comments | Post a Comment

still not convinced...

...that either 'carbon offsets' should be a consumer subsidy to developing industries and still be called an 'offset':

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/7/2/1300/61086/#com ...

or that the original study was either conclusive (by the author's language and actual conclusion of the paper) or backed-up experimentally, particularly on less than regional scale:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/7/2/1300/61086/#17

I don't mean to skirt the reforestation/afforestation issue on its own terms, either for wildlife, water, recreation or wood, but I find 'carbon offsets' to be an important point worth discussion.

by atreyger at 6:38 PM on 03 Jul 2007

More on rainforests...

...as I posted on Joe's original post, I have been hoping that at least maybe carbon offsets could be used to preserve existing rainforests. So, googling "madagascar" and "carbon offsets", I came across a few clues:

Conservation International's Center for Environmental Leadership has a number of programs which seem designed to preserve existing rainforests, including in Madagascar, Philippines, Ecuador, and China. They seem to be the lead organization for these sorts of efforts, and although they have their conservative tendencies, they seem to be doing some good. Here's another recent example of something going on in Madagascar

On the other hand, Mongabay has this piece on a report by Carbon Trade Watch that is very critical of carbon offsets and seems to think that they are all bad.

I personally don't think that any environmental policy should be analyzed only in terms of global warming, but that other ecological considerations need to be made -- for instance, ethanol runs into more problems in "secondary" environmental considerations than global warming ones. But one of the most important "secondary" considerations has to be rainforests, because not only is their deforestation contributing to 20% of carbon emissions, but their destruction is leading to mass extinction and a fundamentally different global biosphere. It should be obvious that direct efforts to protect rain forests would be more effective than going through the indirect process of carbon offsets, but I appreciate that Joe has addressed this issue.

by Jon Rynn at 7:16 PM on 03 Jul 2007

There is more to a tree...

...than dreamed of in your philosophy.

Not long ago, a tree was planted not to capture carbon dioxide, but to restore an integral component of earth's ecology, to provide a home to an endangered species or two, to provide a bulwark against desertification, and to provide a shady place to sit, or a place for a kid to climb in (or your cat to get stuck in).

Now, it appears, global warming has some even questioning trees. Okay, so we shouldn't plant a tree in Peoria, thinking we've done our part to reverse anthropogenic warming. But there are many good reasons yet to plant a tree. So don't stop.

by guade00 at 9:35 PM on 03 Jul 2007

Amen, Brother/Sister Guade

JR's analysis of urban tree-planting is particularly depressing and blindered.

But of course it should be clear that what we individuals do with, say, our week-end flights to the Bahamas (do you hear that, Mayor Michael Bloomberg?), passengers on planes that would fly anyway, should not at all be compared with what the puff-puff-hugely-puffing captains of industry are desired to do.

The moral seems to be -- and I agree entirely -- that individuals should never be discouraged from paying for the planting of trees -- so long as those individuals are not deceived into thinking that that automatically and simply "justifies" and "neutralizes" their earlier carbon-emission episode.

Thanks to Sammie, for more wisdom.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:43 PM on 03 Jul 2007

Amen, Brother/Sister Guade

JR's analysis of urban tree-planting is particularly depressing and blindered.

Thanks to Sammie, for more wisdom.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:43 PM on 03 Jul 2007

oops

Sorry. A kind editor would cut the accidental reduplication from the thread, seeing that it is really the fault of the unforgiving posting program.

Also, more importantly, the message from Sam Wells to which I was referring is on the "first rule" thread.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:48 PM on 03 Jul 2007

Internalizing other values into the carbon market

While forest conservation and reforestation are critical to biodiversity protection, I think the point of this article is that forest carbon projects are not necessarily the best form of offsets in the current carbon market. The EU ETS has created an international market for trading carbon credits. Neither biodiversity, nor sustainable development dividends, have yet been internalized in this market. But if we look at the CDM, there is a ray of hope for making reduction of emissions from deforestation competetive. Interestingly, the two stated goals of the CDM are 1. to reduce carbon emissions, and 2. to promote sustainable development. The second goal has been nothing more than a nod to a popular cause up to now. But as an explicitly stated goal of the CDM, there may yet be a chance to internalize development dividends in the carbon market-- and if this happens, forestry actually has the potential to out-compete other forms of offsets.

Most carbon offsets have very low sustainable development dividends because they benefit only a small group of relatively wealthy people--factory owners, landfill owners, owners of large ranches, etc. Community forest projects, however, have the potential to benefit a fairly large number of people in the lower income levels. Again, these projects face the problems of leakage, additionality, and permanence, and so these projects would still have to be a part of a larger national forest conservation policy designed to reduce national deforestation rates. These national level Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation would then be traded in the carbon markets.

It seems unlikely that biodiversity values will ever be internalized into the future carbon markets, but there is still a lot of action being taken on biodiversity conservation as a separate cause. Obviously not enough is being done on this issue, but that doesn't mean we should force it into climate change policy where it doesn't necessarily belong.

by adriandeveny at 1:32 AM on 04 Jul 2007

Protecting The Edges

There is obviously no way that "offsets" should be treated as offsets - this is simple common sense. Offsets exist, in the vast majority of cases, to allow companies and individuals to feel better, whilst doing very little about reducing the real bottom line - carbon emissions.

But, if treated as a genuine attempt to augment existing reduction efforts, which in themselves are being carried out as quickly as effectively as possible, then "Additional Environmental Benefits" (my phrase) are valid.

On the tree planting issue - and taken as AEBs - an organisation called Cool Earth seems to be taking a good approach, by targeting those parts of the Amazon that are already under dire threat. Purchasing forest protection is not cheap (upwards of £70 / $140 per acre) but then they are buying co-operative protection of land that is being eyed by those who seek to destroy it.

Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org

Keith Farnish www.theearthblog.org

by farnishk at 3:51 AM on 04 Jul 2007

Carbon offsets

The whole concept is fatally flawed.

Carbon "indulgencies" is more accurate. A faulty excuse to expand ones carbon footprint without guilt.

The tree examples serve to illustrate the problematic nature of this approach. The profit motive built into the offset concept encourages scamming.

A much better plan is to divert subsidies from carbon enabling industries and use them to incentivize carbon reducing technologies. Converting government energy use to lower the carbon footprint and tax breaks to consumers for the purchase of devices like plugin hybrids, solar and wind systems, and geothermal heating/cooling is a much better plan.

Carbon taxes, carbon cap and trade schemes, and offsets only turn the social and political urge to cure GHG climate disaster into excuses to continue the status quo of bottomline corporatist bribery of corrupt governance.

Stop blathering on about this nonsense and get to the heart of the matter of this energy revolution. Real change. In government and corporate policy.

Mass production of all the hardware to make this happen needs to start yesterday. Government orders similar to the orders placed for jeeps, tanks, planes, ships, and guns in WW 2 war production need to be placed now for plugin hybrids, solar, wind, geothermal heating/cooling, distributed energy generation and storage grid control systems, and fuel cell biogas systems.

That would bring costs down along with payback periods, making investments by consumers lower living costs and raise quality of living, while at the same time using less energy and emitting less GHG.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 5:03 AM on 04 Jul 2007

Scale up potential

I agree, mostly, with Dr. X. Taxing coal is a half measure, perhaps too passive. I would rather make coal illegal. Offsets are like "let them eat cake" and throwing gold coins while our coach runs over their children.

Further, I wonder if trees can be scaled to make a meaningful difference. There are limits and carbon emissions far exceed anything we can do to sequesture carbon. The time delay of scale up is everything. A similar problem exists with new renewable technology. Solar and wind can be half the consumer cost of coal but require many decades to scale enough to make a difference.

It would help to eliminate all subsidies, and eliminate government funding of favorite sons and daughters. Basic research - yes. Choosing technologies for massive deployment - no.

Natural gas can scale quickly enough to make coal illegal without shutting down "the American way of life". Once coal is dead we can focus on gas which is much easier to curtail site by site.

The oil fires are self extinguishing.

by sunflower at 7:15 AM on 04 Jul 2007

if you make coal illegal...

...then most people are stuck in the dark. And you might want to go over to energybulletin.net and theoildrum.com to read up on natural gas, which looks like it might be peaking. What's wrong with a massive program of rolling out solar and wind power? it's certainly mature enough and doesn't require research before using.

by Jon Rynn at 8:47 AM on 04 Jul 2007
[ Parent ]

Logic Problems

Good essay overall, but ..

First, we continue to malign the general while citing specifics. No universal proof or argument is offered. Indeed there is none, based on science that "forests are bad."

Second, we malign two broad categories as "rare exceptions." How many millions of square miles are available within these "rare" niches?

Third, we assume that the science is done, and the only exceptions to our universal rule have been found by past discovery (Black Swan problem). We do not invite better plans, better species or habitat selection.

Fourth, we argue that Party A planting trees is pointless if Party B is still cutting trees. This despite the fact that Party B might be cutting trees no matter what we do as activists ... and Party A might really offer the best chance of making up the difference.

by odograph at 9:41 AM on 04 Jul 2007

Burn one bridge at a time.

Making coal illegal is not living in the dark

There is enough gas to stop coal expansion, then to begin early retirement of existing coal power plants. Cogeneration with gas at industrial process heat sites could be very cost effective.

Displacing the equivalent of 20MM bbl per day with solar power at $200/m2 (very cost effective) would cost $3 trillion and require decades of growth.

We have crossed the coal bridge, burn it. Once we cross the gas bridge into fields of solar then we can burn the gas bridge too.

Today would be a good day to plant a tropical tree in a temperate zone.

by sunflower at 12:02 PM on 04 Jul 2007

question about data..

..sunflower, where did you get the data on $200/m2? You may have seen Gar Lipow's calculation of $1.7 trillion to generate all electricity with windmills. Did you convert btu's to equate solar with oil? The big question with oil is, do we electrify the transportation system? but according to this report, page 20 we can generate all electricity with solar. So why not spend a couple trillion? how much would it cost to build a bunch more gas generators?

by Jon Rynn at 12:17 PM on 04 Jul 2007
[ Parent ]

One significant digit

I used high-intensity pv numbers. $100/m2 tracking mirrors (heliostats or dishes) which, in average climates, supplies the oil energy equivalent of 0.5bbl/m2/year. (Colorado sun is 1 bbl/m2/year.) This oil energy equivalent could be used to generate electrical power or engine power.

Add $100/m2 aperture for 40% efficient pv from Spectrolab (10cm2 at $10/cm2 and 1000 sun intensity).

$200/m2 is $0.60/Watt(e), about 10 times cheaper than rooftop pv. The scale and capital required is enormous, even though it is cost effective. Time will be required for growth to occur. And we haven't even started yet. Bush "zeroed-out solar concentrators".

by sunflower at 12:44 PM on 04 Jul 2007

Thanks!

by Jon Rynn at 1:23 PM on 04 Jul 2007
[ Parent ]

Effect of deforestation

You mostly mention the use (or lack of use) of planting trees as means to do carbon offsetting (inverse chimney effect?).

How much effect has the current reforestation on global climate change? I read recently (on paper) that the ever increasing deforestation of Brazilian (rain) forests to increase the available land for soy bean industial agriculture could lead to removal of the sef-regenerating rains in the Amazonas and thus lead to droughts ...

See also UNEP articles on forest loss and combating deforestation.

by Johan at 3:10 AM on 05 Jul 2007

mistake

Of course I meant current DEforestation in the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph.

by Johan at 3:12 AM on 05 Jul 2007
[ Parent ]

Counting trees

Joe -
Your first argument against reforestation, that if I plant 1,000 acres in Brazil but don't know what happens in the rest of Brazil, by drawing circles around entire countries or companies would rule out anyone doing anything, including energy efficiency and renewable energy, which you support. It is utterly defeatist and the logic does not carry.

Carbon offsetting in a country and world with no international limits on CO2, is about me taking responsibility for me.

If I replace a 1995 Ford Mustang with a 2007 Prius, I have reduced my emissions. If I offset my emissions by buying certified tropical forest offsets from Brazil, I am offsetting my emissions, regardless of what the rest of Brazil does.

By saying buying a Prius is no good because it enables Toyota to sell three SUVs creates an unworkable logic. If I buy a CFL but my neighbor adds a outdoor light, was it useless for me to do so. Should I not buy a CFL until everyone in my utility district buys CFLs and reduces their emissions. Should we do nothing until the other utilties, states or countries do something? That is an irresponsible approach which, luckily, the European and Kyoto countries are not doing.

The problem with the logic is that you draw an artificial circle of emissions and then say until this circle reduces its emissions (Toyota's, America's, etc.) no one should do anything.

The fact is: until we have national or global legislation, the only person I can draw a circle around is me. And when I do (buy a Prius or any car over 27MPG, or a CFL or solar panels for my roof) I am having a direct impact in reducing my CO2 emissions.

Certainly, Joe, you believe that energy efficiency and renewable energy reduces or offsets CO2. Yet, by your logic, as long as emissions are increasing globally no one should do anything.

Jake

by Jake Billings at 3:44 PM on 05 Jul 2007

Romm's second rare exception....

Romm makes a couple of necessary acknowledgments in his second posting. Its true that certification won't be that easy- setting up a new global market is never easy. These programs will take time. As numerous individuals have pointed out, deforestation is a large component of anthropogenic CO2 generation. To ignore it is insanity. The global warming/carbon offset component in tropical deforestation is just a part of an issue that includes poverty, desertification, biodiversity, soil and water conservation.

A program of carbon offsets would be a voluntary, market-based incentive. Certification would only occur at the behest of the participating country (from what I hear, Brasil is not interested at this point- the soybean market is too good). The process would have to be wall-to-wall, that is to say, covering forest gain and loss across the entire country. Successful studies have already quantified biomass and carbon sequestration using field sampling and existing remote sensing technology. Expanding the these techniques to certify is not nearly as expensive or remote as Romm plays it out to be. This is simply an excuse to avoid paying for a service (carbon sequestration) that is in increasingly short supply.

by canislatrans at 4:47 PM on 05 Jul 2007

Personal experience

A personal experience here: In the early '70s, my farm was located on a small creek that was surrounded by large, old growth timber. I got rain when noone else did! Personal observation. The land was sold that had the timber and the timber was clear cut. My rainy streaks were gone!
A personal observation of what to me is happening world wide. We are not taking care of our planet and it is fixing to throw a hissy fit on us!!! May we be able to correct things before it is to late. If we all do one small thing, it might make a difference. If we all do big things, it will make a difference. A tree is a good thing, no ifs, ands or buts about it. By the way, how much electricity are we wasting by keeping our computers turned on to discuss this?

Farmer in the Dell

by Farmerinthedell at 2:08 PM on 06 Jul 2007

Good Points, Farmer

Hey, all:

Farmer, you bring one especially good point: trees are not a forest. The single age, single species plantation crap that has been so proudly waved around suggests no understanding at all of the complexity of a forest. Also, the great value of forests to moderate and modify local climates and help create precipitation has been lost by some of the so-called 'environmental engineers', who are generally worth about a dime a dozen. Also lost by them, assuming they ever knew, is the vast intangible value of forests and the ecosystems that they are part of--not seeing the biodiversity for the trees.

Referring to trees, and assuming that means a forest, indicates a short-circuit in the learning process that renders everything that follows suspect. And making up rules for which there is no consensus suggests a level of hubris beyond understanding.

What alarms me most of all is the assumption that all the environmental features of the planet are here for the aggrandizement and pleasure of man. It makes me wonder what they think the forests and all the other vast ecosystems did until humans arose. Just sigh and wait?

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

by SustainableGreen at 7:00 PM on 06 Jul 2007

What about Peat?

Well Rainforrests are a big issue.

Partly because of the tree carbon
Partly because of the diurnal evaporative cooling.
But also because the soil underneath the trees is peat. And peat holds LOTS of carbon.

But peat isn't ONLY in rainforrests.

So how about adding to rule 1 caviat, "protecting wetland peat".

It's only 3% of the earth's land surface, but it holds as much carbon as there is currently in the air right now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLfhWVZ7k10

by GreyFlcn at 9:38 PM on 06 Jul 2007

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