Prominent academics, including a former IPCC chair, round on governments worldwide for using the concept of net zero emissions to ‘greenwash’ their lack of commitment to solving global warming.
I read the article and essentially the authors shot down every attempt at reducing or removing carbons from the atmosphere. Apparently, no method is useful because they all are not 100% perfect. As a former scientist myself, I feel the authors have fallen to a common blindside of scientists: idealism. In science, we strive for the “95% significance” when in reality, even a small percentage improvement is already good. It is very likely that there will be no single one solution to the problem of global warming; rather it will require a whole slew of new technologies, economic models and even the social sciences to combine their effects into measurable change.
It’s true that net zero as it is now doesn’t work, because companies mostly buy “contracts” to preserve existing forests… That is what is happening. All companies have been net zero for years, and co2 levels are still increasing. Net zero doesn’t account for the fact that our ecosystem already produce co2. Existing forests are not able to compensate natural co2 + our co2. One can pay to preserve existing forests as much as they like, but in practice it is doing nothing other than marketing.
It is pretty trivial, and I don’t understand why governments allow companies to still do it
Hello, companies have not be net zero for years? In fact the US is anticipating increased reporting reqs on green house gas emissions. What you might be referring to is the fact that some companies went the “easy route” and bought a bunch of these sketchy recs and are now being told by certain committees they cannot claim carbon neutral. I want to say it was CDP who was having these discussions?
The biggest issue I think we see from a clarity standpoint is that there is currently balkanization over industry terms. CDP may say that carbon neutral claims have to be proceeded by operations decarbonization and then the remainder can be bought down but the layperson doesn’t see that.
Layer in that countries have to go by each jurisdiction on what they report in (Businesses in the EU have one emissions factor set, another in the UK has another, Asia a third etc)
And you get some confusing estimates.
I promise you though, most companies may have committed to Net0 but a very large portion ended up buying RECs to offset. The arguments that are happening now are good because that’s the easy way and once everyone is doing it that doesn’t work.
Back to carbon sequestration, we are repeatedly seeing that new hype developments in this space are bunk or generate more carbon then they develop OR are too hard to track and prove (can’t think of examples for that one, forest?).
Some of the only ways companies are decarbonizing right now are greening of the grid and purchases of emissions free energy. Unless we spend more time adding to the grid with electricity that will not generate emissions, we will never be able to hit net zero. (Without a significant cultural change in consumption).
Pragmatically I think we have a lot to be gained on focusing on logistic improvements via a cost of carbon built in (to later be force spent on recs or sequestration tech/R&D). Consider that some companies buy an entire fleet of gas and then ship that overseas for their fleet simply because it makes their audit and accounting easier. That is such a net deficit in energy we’re producing with that fuel it’s an oxymoron. (I mean this as smaller distro networks will always be less efficient)
Sorry I didn’t mean to wall of text you but I find this stuff fascinating.
Many companies are net0 or whatever they call it. The one I work for is, for instance. But it is a scam my company fell for, pushed by the “everyone is doing it”.
But they are absolutely not co2 neutral. Being co2 neutral requires to have a system to turn co2 into o2 and some biologically useful compounds near the emission site. That system must be “newly” created, it couldn’t exist before. Otherwise it is not “going” co2 neutral, it is doing nothing and pretend to do something.
Easiest way to create such system is to plant trees nearby the emission site, but it takes a long time before such trees reach an appropriate level of transformation turnover
Yeah, I saw some of your other comments regarding the 3rd world tree offsets. Definitely the shady recs I was talking about.
The shady req pushers drive me nuts, the legislation on what you can and can’t count is usually pretty clear but they’re just spam. I would love to see govt action against them
Usually net zero claims are claimed by a certain date so I’m unsure if you’re saying your company thinks it’s at net zero (very few are as outlined in most govts reporting reqs) or they have a commitment and are claiming Z% progress. This is also a good example of the balkinization of terms. Net zero to me means “company no longer emitting in scope 1 and 2 by x year”.
If it’s the latter that’s where the whole review and pushback on net zero as a marketing term is, some of these companies just went out and bought up all the renewable energy on the market, didn’t touch anything they cant just buy and are now bitching they don’t get to claim net zero progress. I agree with the committees, fuck those companies. If you’re not putting in the work then you shouldn’t be able to claim that.
Re: the new system, you’re describing the concept of additionallity to the power grid as well. We will ultimately reach a point where we’ve only got thinga like new growth forests or some other carbon sequestration but we’ve got a really long way to even shut off the flow of CO2.
Right now a lot of focus is on getting scope 1 and 2 emissions to 0 (what you consume vs purchase for raw energy) vs scope 3 (all your suppliers and users emissions too). I believe you may be describing a Scope 3 CO2 neutral. In which case I agree, but goodluck getting most of our politicians right now to agree.
It’s not the perfect end goal but the logic goes that if every company has to get to net zero via supply chain and adding to the grid, we might see scope 3 hit zero with additional crack down on laggards?
Editing: just to add that interim usage of biogenic fuels is a good way to cut CO2 and only release CH4 and N2O in very very limited quantities (from what I’ve seen usually less than those in non biogenic sources). theoretically committing capital to plant or grow these sources now could be used to “reduce” carbon impact in future supply chains. Probably has some issues.
Because emissions accounting is pretty new and a lot of large companies have some serious problems with it. Intresstingly a lot of other large companies are for it as well, as it allows them to beat competitors in certain fields. Also more accounting is good for accountants. One huge group are insurance companies, who really want proper data, to reduce risk and so they are pretty pissed at this as well. So it is not a big oil vs some small activist groups.
The whole thing is a scam. The only way on can claim 0 net emissions. Is to plant local to the emission (nearby), a number of new trees that net immediately consume an amount of co2 equal to the one produced by a factory. Same for roads.
Everything else is marketing.
Worst is that most of these scam contracts are to prevent forests in some remote country to be cut for 30 years. How does that even help. How can anyone even think this can compensate co2.
I really don’t think that’s what the article is saying at all. For the most part this is not even a forward looking article. Most of it is how carbon neutral schemes were used to avoid significant green investment over the past few decades. It has very little to say about current carbon storage except that we should be wary of the same schemes with claims that they’ve scaled to the size of the current crisis because it is most likely that they were simply not doing anything to begin with.
I read the article and essentially the authors shot down every attempt at reducing or removing carbons from the atmosphere. Apparently, no method is useful because they all are not 100% perfect. As a former scientist myself, I feel the authors have fallen to a common blindside of scientists: idealism. In science, we strive for the “95% significance” when in reality, even a small percentage improvement is already good. It is very likely that there will be no single one solution to the problem of global warming; rather it will require a whole slew of new technologies, economic models and even the social sciences to combine their effects into measurable change.
It’s true that net zero as it is now doesn’t work, because companies mostly buy “contracts” to preserve existing forests… That is what is happening. All companies have been net zero for years, and co2 levels are still increasing. Net zero doesn’t account for the fact that our ecosystem already produce co2. Existing forests are not able to compensate natural co2 + our co2. One can pay to preserve existing forests as much as they like, but in practice it is doing nothing other than marketing.
It is pretty trivial, and I don’t understand why governments allow companies to still do it
Hello, companies have not be net zero for years? In fact the US is anticipating increased reporting reqs on green house gas emissions. What you might be referring to is the fact that some companies went the “easy route” and bought a bunch of these sketchy recs and are now being told by certain committees they cannot claim carbon neutral. I want to say it was CDP who was having these discussions?
The biggest issue I think we see from a clarity standpoint is that there is currently balkanization over industry terms. CDP may say that carbon neutral claims have to be proceeded by operations decarbonization and then the remainder can be bought down but the layperson doesn’t see that.
Layer in that countries have to go by each jurisdiction on what they report in (Businesses in the EU have one emissions factor set, another in the UK has another, Asia a third etc) And you get some confusing estimates.
I promise you though, most companies may have committed to Net0 but a very large portion ended up buying RECs to offset. The arguments that are happening now are good because that’s the easy way and once everyone is doing it that doesn’t work.
Back to carbon sequestration, we are repeatedly seeing that new hype developments in this space are bunk or generate more carbon then they develop OR are too hard to track and prove (can’t think of examples for that one, forest?).
Some of the only ways companies are decarbonizing right now are greening of the grid and purchases of emissions free energy. Unless we spend more time adding to the grid with electricity that will not generate emissions, we will never be able to hit net zero. (Without a significant cultural change in consumption).
Pragmatically I think we have a lot to be gained on focusing on logistic improvements via a cost of carbon built in (to later be force spent on recs or sequestration tech/R&D). Consider that some companies buy an entire fleet of gas and then ship that overseas for their fleet simply because it makes their audit and accounting easier. That is such a net deficit in energy we’re producing with that fuel it’s an oxymoron. (I mean this as smaller distro networks will always be less efficient)
Sorry I didn’t mean to wall of text you but I find this stuff fascinating.
Many companies are net0 or whatever they call it. The one I work for is, for instance. But it is a scam my company fell for, pushed by the “everyone is doing it”.
But they are absolutely not co2 neutral. Being co2 neutral requires to have a system to turn co2 into o2 and some biologically useful compounds near the emission site. That system must be “newly” created, it couldn’t exist before. Otherwise it is not “going” co2 neutral, it is doing nothing and pretend to do something.
Easiest way to create such system is to plant trees nearby the emission site, but it takes a long time before such trees reach an appropriate level of transformation turnover
Yeah, I saw some of your other comments regarding the 3rd world tree offsets. Definitely the shady recs I was talking about. The shady req pushers drive me nuts, the legislation on what you can and can’t count is usually pretty clear but they’re just spam. I would love to see govt action against them
Usually net zero claims are claimed by a certain date so I’m unsure if you’re saying your company thinks it’s at net zero (very few are as outlined in most govts reporting reqs) or they have a commitment and are claiming Z% progress. This is also a good example of the balkinization of terms. Net zero to me means “company no longer emitting in scope 1 and 2 by x year”.
If it’s the latter that’s where the whole review and pushback on net zero as a marketing term is, some of these companies just went out and bought up all the renewable energy on the market, didn’t touch anything they cant just buy and are now bitching they don’t get to claim net zero progress. I agree with the committees, fuck those companies. If you’re not putting in the work then you shouldn’t be able to claim that.
Re: the new system, you’re describing the concept of additionallity to the power grid as well. We will ultimately reach a point where we’ve only got thinga like new growth forests or some other carbon sequestration but we’ve got a really long way to even shut off the flow of CO2.
Right now a lot of focus is on getting scope 1 and 2 emissions to 0 (what you consume vs purchase for raw energy) vs scope 3 (all your suppliers and users emissions too). I believe you may be describing a Scope 3 CO2 neutral. In which case I agree, but goodluck getting most of our politicians right now to agree.
It’s not the perfect end goal but the logic goes that if every company has to get to net zero via supply chain and adding to the grid, we might see scope 3 hit zero with additional crack down on laggards?
Editing: just to add that interim usage of biogenic fuels is a good way to cut CO2 and only release CH4 and N2O in very very limited quantities (from what I’ve seen usually less than those in non biogenic sources). theoretically committing capital to plant or grow these sources now could be used to “reduce” carbon impact in future supply chains. Probably has some issues.
Because emissions accounting is pretty new and a lot of large companies have some serious problems with it. Intresstingly a lot of other large companies are for it as well, as it allows them to beat competitors in certain fields. Also more accounting is good for accountants. One huge group are insurance companies, who really want proper data, to reduce risk and so they are pretty pissed at this as well. So it is not a big oil vs some small activist groups.
The whole thing is a scam. The only way on can claim 0 net emissions. Is to plant local to the emission (nearby), a number of new trees that net immediately consume an amount of co2 equal to the one produced by a factory. Same for roads.
Everything else is marketing.
Worst is that most of these scam contracts are to prevent forests in some remote country to be cut for 30 years. How does that even help. How can anyone even think this can compensate co2.
Should be illegal marketing
An old engineering saying is “Perfect is the enemy of good”.
It’s very old and not just for engineering, before engineering was a word old. It’s a great proverb though regardless.
I really don’t think that’s what the article is saying at all. For the most part this is not even a forward looking article. Most of it is how carbon neutral schemes were used to avoid significant green investment over the past few decades. It has very little to say about current carbon storage except that we should be wary of the same schemes with claims that they’ve scaled to the size of the current crisis because it is most likely that they were simply not doing anything to begin with.