At worst, these discriminate against poor, low-emitting countries, and could even push greenwashing — creating the false impression that countries’ policies are more environmentally friendly than they actually are.
Today’s proven carbon capture technology at the point of emission has a high imputed carbon price, except where there is a specialized user of the CO2 such as for enhanced oil recovery.
Offset markets are favored by corporations announcing net zero plans, but for national accounting they remain contentious, and were a sticking point at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change conference at Katowice , under Article 6 of the Paris Accord.
Proponents of offsets postulate that all carbon is equal, but the cost of avoiding carbon isn’t equal — the rich are benefiting from the carbon space of the poor.
Second, even if one does reach zero, what is the shape of the trajectory to get there? Most countries are conspicuously quiet on the details, but the good news is we are seeing see more pronouncements of 2030 or other interim targets.
Most importantly, how should any global zero be distributed across countries? Not everyone can be expected to reach zero at the same time, but to allow current low emitters some time to reach zero later, this means today’s high emitters should get to zero before 2050 — but they’re not even on track to reach that goal, despite pledges or intentions of the same.
It also tells us the country’s date of zero, but provides a richer analysis, because it not only directly indicates if a country is behind schedule and likely to bust its budget, but also tells us how much time a low emissions country has before it must hit peak emissions.
For low emitters, they should reduce their growth of emissions before peaking.
The COVID-19 pandemic taught us to flatten the curve of infection, to avoid the exhaustion of medical capacity even if the total infections over time remain the same.
The good news is that low emission developing countries should also be able to lower their total emissions because of greater decoupling of their GDP from emissions over time — as their economies develop, they will not need to emit as much carbon, and technologies are continually improving.
Low emitters can’t think “not my fault” equals “not my problem”.
If one billion people were given modest electricity supply, even if entirely from coal as a thought exercise, it would only add 0.25% to present global emissions.
One tool is to leverage such funding to only pay the viability gap for cleaner technologies — the difference in costs between traditional and cleaner solutions, and not the entire cost.
By tackling all emissions, they would pay the learning-curve costs for solutions that would eventually trickle down to the poor, including carbon capture and sequestration, direct air capture, green hydrogen, and so on.
Most people understand climate change and want to avoid catastrophic climate changes, but are they willing to shift their lifestyles and spending patterns? Unfortunately, we’re like the person who really wants to lose weight but hasn’t yet gotten around to dieting and exercising.
While it’s the third largest emitter, that’s because of its population — its per capita emissions are less than half the world average.
As they accelerate their reductions, innovation and finance should flow to low emitters, and all countries can become even more ambitious in lowering their cumulative emissions.