What’s the real difference? Don’t offsets also do the same thing?
If I emit 5g of CO2 but purchase similar in offsets - the offsets have to achieve a reduction of 5g unless something like a scam is going on.
If I emit 5g of CO2 but purchase similar in offsets - the offsets have to achieve a reduction of 5g unless something like a scam is going on.
Sometimes, the carbon offsets are from projects that would be built anyway, and there is a lot of sketchiness all around.
It might be better than nothing or it might empower companies to pollute more and then say, "Look, we are offsetting all this!"
the classic example is landowners selling offsets for the mature forests on their land - that's good! and incentivising the preservation of forests is good! but that forest already existed, and has existed for hundreds of years, so does it really make sense that some company can count it against their carbon emissions and claim to be "net zero" just because they paid a landowner to not cut it down?
it makes the whole concept of offsets less of an overall pure good than emitters simply not emitting carbon in the first place, because that is actually a very simple and clear calculation.
If you buy a 1 GWh block of wind/solar energy for a month, you're not doing anything to supply clean energy when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing.
"24/7 carbon free" means increasing the time resolution from 1 month to 1 hour, and funding projects that deliver clean energy when you're actually using it. This includes stuff like batteries, nuclear, and geothermal.