Carbon Credit Buyers Need Options — Including Avoidance and Reductions

by Margaret Morales (Trellis) Why carbon removals aren’t always better. -- ... The shift toward removals has led some companies away from projects that avoid or reduce global emissions — for example, by keeping the planet’s existing forests standing, providing clean cooking stoves or reducing landfill methane emissions.

As a result, carbon removal credits command higher prices in the voluntary carbon market, according to a recent study from Calyx Global, a carbon credit ratings agency.

Behind the growing preference for removals is a perception that these carbon credits are, by definition, high quality. After several reports that some carbon projects have underdelivered on their projected impact, buyers are looking for a way to ensure their dollars drive real climate benefit.

But the preference for removals over reduction or avoidance credits is based more on fear of reputational damage than on concrete evidence that removals are consistently higher quality.

3 reasons to consider reductions and avoidance

There’s little evidence that carbon removals are consistently of higher quality than avoidance-based projects

Carbon credit quality is multi-dimensional: It includes measures of project additionality, transparency, local community benefits, duration of carbon storage and more. One of the most common metrics of carbon credit quality is greenhouse gas integrity: the likelihood that one carbon credit avoids or removes one ton of emissions from the atmosphere.

By this metric, removal projects do not consistently outperform those that avoid or reduce emissions. In fact, more carbon avoidance projects than removals met the highest greenhouse gas integrity ratings in a recent study by Calyx Global.

Stopping emissions today has more climate benefit than removing emissions tomorrow

There’s a time value to climate action. Many emission reduction opportunities are ready for wide implementation now, while many removal opportunities will take decades to scale.

Carbon emitted to our atmosphere today will remain there for centuries, warming the planet. Avoiding those emissions today averts centuries of climate harm, does not require expensive air-capture technology and buys us time to adapt to climate change and scale other climate solutions.

Even if we can eventually remove and permanently sequester today’s emissions, they’ll already have altered our climate by that time.

Opportunities to cut emissions abound. They need funding

There’s no lack of low-cost, high-impact opportunities to cut emissions now. Keeping the planet’s existing forests standing could reduce global annual emissions by some 15 percent and recapture over 500 billion tons of CO2 over time, as those forests mature. Disseminating clean cookstoves could slash 2 percent of annual global emissions — nearly equivalent to decarbonizing the whole aviation industry.

What’s missing is the funding. The planet needs between $2 trillion and $6 trillion in additional climate finance each year to align with a 1.5-degree Celsius warming scenario.

Choose a strategy, and act

Excerpt from E&E News Climatewire: Carbon removal companies use energy, CO2-absorbing materials, proprietary technologies and oil field workers to pull heat-trapping carbon from the air or seas and store it underground or in long-lasting products like concrete. Some oil CEOs have pitched carbon removal as a way to extend the fossil fuel era — an argument that has been rejected by climate scientists but could appeal to (President Donald) Trump.

Repealing federal funding could send shock waves through venture capital markets, domestic supply chains and local communities that have already begun betting on the climate technologies, according to analysts and some Republican lawmakers.

(Elon) Musk has previously supported carbon removal development, putting up $100 million of his own money for a contest intended to advance the field. But Musk, who as CEO of Tesla promoted the climate benefits of electric vehicles, has stood by the president as the administration implements policy rollbacks that could slow EV adoption.

Cassidy (Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)) and other other top Republicans don’t want to see the same thing happen to federal funding for carbon removal. READ MORE