To avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change, we need to keep the planet from warming more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This is not the same as zero emissions, which means that no carbon or other greenhouse gases are released at all, or carbon negative, which means that more carbon is removed than is emitted.
Carbon offsets can take a variety of forms, such as planting trees to store carbon, funding a methane capture project at a landfill, or paying farmers to reduce synthetic fertilizer use and plant cover crops.
Because net zero pledges depend on carbon offsets, many climate scientists believe the pledges actually perpetuate business as usual, enabling countries and companies to continue emitting greenhouse gases rather than doing the hard work of cutting emissions.
But it is still an important indication of progress that net zero targets have been set by countries, industries and companies representing 90 percent of global GDP.
Most other countries, including the U.S., have goals of 2050, while countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and a few others have a 2060 target; India has pledged to be net zero by 2070.
Of the 2,000 largest public companies in the world, 622 have net zero strategies.
Bruce Usher, professor and co-director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School and an expert on carbon offsets, believes it’s important that companies and countries are making net zero pledges because it’s a clear acknowledgement that they need to reduce emissions.
First, most are voluntary: Only a few of the countries that have made net zero pledges, representing 10 percent of global emissions and including Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, the U.K., and New Zealand, have legally binding pledges.
Another problem is that many pledges do not cover all greenhouse gas emissions or all economic sectors within countries.
A case in point: Walmart is pledging net zero by 2040 but is not including emissions from its global value chain, which is responsible for 95 percent of the company’s emissions.
Despite these deficiencies, Usher believes that companies honestly want to meet their pledges.
However, Climate Action Tracker found that there is a gap of 0.9° C between countries’ current policies to cut emissions and their net zero goals.
greenhouse gas emissions 50 to 52 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, but with his Build Back Better bill stalled in Congress, the nation currently has no specific means to get there.
At COP26, countries adopted rules to establish an international carbon market that would enable countries to buy and sell U.N.-certified carbon credits or carbon offsets from one another.
“There’s no human endeavor that doesn’t involve some emissions of CO2 or other greenhouse gases in the process.
Oxfam maintains that for four large oil and gas producers to achieve net zero through carbon offsets, a plot of land twice the size of the U.K would be required.
Moreover, much of the tree planting occurs in poor and developing countries in the Global South where people who are least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions depend on the land for their livelihoods.
Farm-based offsets assume that carbon will be stored in the soil over the long term, but agricultural decisions can change from year to year due to market and environmental conditions.
Another problem is “leakage,” because avoiding emissions in one place doesn’t necessarily mean they will not occur elsewhere.
As of 2021, carbon capture, utilization and storage capacity has reached 40 metric tons per year, but according to the International Energy Agency, the technology’s capacity needs to grow to 1.6 billion metric tons per year by 2030 and 7.6 billion metric tons per year by 2050 to reach net zero.
“Because the whole purpose of carbon offsets is to reduce emissions at the lowest cost possible, participants will do whatever they can to reduce costs, which means playing by whatever the rules are, they will go after the lowest cost solution,” said Usher.
Over-crediting actually increases emissions because whenever a polluter uses a credit that doesn’t reduce a ton of carbon, the total amount of emissions is increased.
For example, the Massachusetts Audubon Society made $6 million from selling offsets based on preserving 9,700 acres of forest that were never going to be cut down in the first place.
“If everybody’s chasing carbon credits, it’s almost certain we’re not going to have additionality unless we eventually get to direct air capture.
Despite these challenges, Usher thinks the net zero pledges are critical.
While there are voluntary markets and a few local compliance markets in California and the E.U., what is necessary is a global compliance market with very clear regulations.
According to Net Zero Tracker, net zero timelines also need to jibe with the science.
Net zero pledges must include all greenhouse gases, including methane, and all emissions a country produces, including exports and the emissions of products made outside a country.
Countries need to have specific policies they will implement to reach net zero, such as strategies to increase renewable energy, plans for natural climate solutions, or clean energy incentives for industries.
Despite the imperfection of current net zero pledges, however, Usher is optimistic because of what he learned as CEO of a company that developed offset projects.