Carbon Offsets: Don't Let Perfect be the Enemy of Good

If you’re a casual observer of carbon markets and carbon offsets, you have probably heard A LOT of conflicting information over the past few years, most of it negative. Whether it is an article in The Guardian taking shots at rainforest projects on Verra, Greenpeace calling all carbon offsets “pure greenwash”, or reports from CarbonPlan about the questioning of the accounting of forest-based carbon offsets in the California carbon market, the news has not been great.

If most of that last sentence went over your head, that’s okay, but I bet you feel like you can’t trust offsets. And I don’t blame you. With a background in reforestation offset project development, it often felt like my business partner and I were carrying the metaphorical weight of the entire carbon market on our backs. Everyone thought an offset was planting baby trees and most offsets were something very different because there wasn't much money in doing the really impactful stuff.

That, I think, is the core of the problem. The public was so disinterested in climate for so long, that there was little pressure on economic or political systems to act meaningfully, and that suppressed the demand and inherent price of offsets as a result. For those that remained in the offset field during this time – from roughly 2010 through 2020 – they were lean times that created pressure to make offset projects viable. I don’t say this as a defense or rationale, but just to acknowledge that there was real pressure for registries to help project developers demonstrate profitability. That needs to tighten up a lot as we move forward. I would also state that while there is a lot of improvement that needs to happen in carbon offset project development, much of the criticism in The Guardian and from Greenpeace has a heavy slant to it or, worse, is occasionally just factually incorrect.

Now that prices have risen significantly and continue to trend upwards due to rapidly expanding demand, many players in the market are working to correct the inherent errors in the space. This is especially important as there is a rush to market from some who are not particularly interested in their environmental outcomes as much as the potential for profit and many, many others who are unfamiliar with the history of the markets or why certain things should be done certain ways.

One organization trying to clean up carbon markets is the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (ICVCM). To some fanfare, they released last week their framework around Core Carbon Principles, with their CCP acronym unfortunately shared with the Chinese Communist Party. Though some were excited about the release, for most of the industry it landed with a thud. Effectively, the ICVCM had repackaged what carbon offset registries had long stated the point of offsets were. The 10 CCPs were obvious to anyone that knew anything about it and they kind of phoned in their work, not even getting their main graphic correct.

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