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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

> line with Formula E’s achievement as the first net-zero sport

I don't understand how can they claim such things, what is the definition for "net-zero".

Doesn't matter how optimized, say, the production of a car is, say it produces 10 metric tons of CO2, how are they gonna offset it? And all the rubber, travelling, batteries, etc?

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> These unavoidable emissions from the past six seasons have now been certified as offset through investment in Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard UN projects in-line with the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism.

> From biogas energy generation in China to landfill gas energy generation in Mexico and wind power energy generation in Morocco, the offsetting projects Formula E has partnered with are carefully selected based on their social or ecological benefits, and on their location, all of which are situated in regions that we’ve raced in, from Season 1 to-date.

[1] https://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2020/september/three-ste...

More examples of the kind of projects Gold Standard invests in:

https://www.goldstandard.org/our-story/gold-standard-feature...

Carbon offsets are super complicated, potentially shady, and I don’t fully understand them, but the gist of it is that they pay money to companies to either not produce carbon that they otherwise would have, or use the money to install and operate equipment in factories and powerplants that captures carbon before it goes out into the world. You can also do things that pull carbon out of regular air but I think the first two options are so much more efficient that they dominate the market. It seems like the system could be gamed, but as far as I know it broadly works.

>> Carbon offsets are super complicated, potentially shady, and I don’t fully understand them

How can you judge them while openly admitting you don’t understand them?

There are clear perverse incentives and well-documented abuses.

I think they are purposefully confusing to obfuscate the fact that offsets are primarily a PR mechanism

Details here:

- https://www.fiaformulae.com/en/discover/sustainability/net-z...

- https://f.fiaformulae.com/r/sustainability/FE-Sustainability...

Not clear which emissions are being offset. Although, relative to ICE racing, the bar is low.

most emission from ICE racing (at least in the high level series where they do a lot of traveling) is from the planes and ships that transport the team members and equipment, and I imagine that's the same for Formula E

> Although, relative to ICE racing, the bar is low.

You do realize the actual ICE emissions dwarf in comparison to the whole picture right? If you take Formula 1 for example, they run 20 cars that will each burn through about 200-300kg of fossil fuel per race weekend. Even so, the actual emissions from the cars only accounts for 0.7% of the total CO2 emissions of a whole season of F1. Almost half the emissions are just from transporting equipment from race to race (via air, sea and land). About a quarter is transporting the personnel. Almost all of these still apply to Formula E.

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