Carbon credits (ghost) purchased by companies to offset CO2
More than 90% of tropical forest carbon credits are phantom credits. These are those that follow the Verra standard and are bought by brands such as Gucci, Shell and Disney to label their products as "carbon-neutral". All the details in the joint investigation by Guardian, Die Zeit and SourceMaterial
Forest carbon offsets adopted by the world's top supplier and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big companies are largely worthless and could make global warming worse, according to a new investigation.
Research into Verra, the world's leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, found that based on analysis of a significant proportion of projects , more than 90% of rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely “ghost credits” and do not represent true carbon savings.
The analysis raises questions about the credits bought by some internationally renowned companies – some of which have labeled their products as "carbon neutral", or have told their consumers they can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the crisis worse climate. But doubts have been repeatedly raised about their real effectiveness.
The nine-month investigation was carried out by the Guardian , the German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism organisation. It is based on a new analysis of scientific studies on Verra's rainforest programs.
It was also based on dozens of interviews and field reports with scientists, professionals and indigenous communities. The findings – which have been hotly contested by Verra – could pose serious questions for companies that depend on offsets as part of their net zero strategies.
Washington DC-based Verra manages a number of leading environmental standards for climate action and sustainable development, including its Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) which has issued more than 1 billion carbon credits. It approves three-quarters of all voluntary offsets. Its rainforest protection program makes up 40% of approved credits and was launched before the Paris Agreement with the aim of generating revenue for ecosystem protection.
Verra argues that the conclusions reached by the studies are incorrect and questions their methodology. And he points out that their work since 2009 has channeled billions of dollars towards vital forest conservation work.
Here's what the investigation revealed.
According to two studies, only a handful of Verra's rainforest projects showed evidence of reducing deforestation, and further analysis indicated that 94 percent of the credits had no climate benefit.
According to analysis of a 2022 Cambridge University study, the threat to forests was overestimated by an average of 400% for Verra projects.
Gucci, Salesforce, BHP, Shell, easyJet, Leon and the band Pearl Jam are among dozens of companies and organizations that have purchased Verra-approved rainforest offsets for environmental claims. Human rights issues are a serious problem in at least one of the offset projects. The Guardian visited a flagship project in Peru and was shown videos that residents said showed their homes being torn down with chainsaws and wires by park rangers and police. They spoke of forced evictions and tensions with park authorities. The analysis: "It's disappointing and scary."
To assess claims, a team of journalists analyzed the results of three scientific studies that used satellite imagery to verify the results of a series of forest clearing projects, known as Redd+ schemes. While several studies have looked at offsets, these are the only three that have tried to apply rigorous scientific methods to measure avoided deforestation.
The organizations that set up and manage these projects produce their own predictions of how much deforestation they will stop, using Verra's rules. The forecasts are evaluated by a third party approved by Verra and, if accepted, are used to generate the credits that companies can purchase and use to offset their carbon emissions.
For example, if an organization estimates that its project will stop 100 hectares (247 acres) of deforestation, it can use a Verra-approved formula to convert this into 40,000 CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) of carbon emissions saved in dense forest tropical if no deforestation occurs, although the formula varies with habitat and other factors. These saved emissions can then be purchased by a business and applied to their carbon emission reduction goals.
Two different groups of scientists – one based internationally and the other in Cambridge, UK – examined a total of around two-thirds of the 87 active projects approved by Verra. Some were excluded by researchers when they felt there was not enough information to rate them fairly.
The two studies by the international group of researchers found that only eight of the 29 projects approved by Verra, for which further analysis was possible, showed evidence of significant reductions in deforestation.
Journalists were able to carry out further analysis on these projects, comparing the estimates made by the compensation projects with the results obtained by the scientists. The analysis indicated that approximately 94% of credits generated by projects should not have been approved.
Credits from 21 projects had no climate benefit, seven had between 98% and 52% less impact than claimed under the Verra system, and one had an 80% higher impact, the investigation.
Separately, the Cambridge University team's study of 40 Verra projects found that while some of them had halted deforestation, the areas were extremely small. Only four projects were responsible for three quarters of the total protected forest.
Journalists again took a closer look at these results and found that, in the 32 projects where Verra's claims could be compared with the study's results, the baseline scenarios of forest loss appeared to be overestimated by about 400 percent. . Three projects in Madagascar achieved excellent results and have a significant impact on the figures. If you don't include these projects, you have an average overestimation of about 950%.
The studies used different methods and time periods, looked at different ranges of projects, and the researchers said that no modeling approach is ever perfect, acknowledging the limitations of each study. However, the data showed broad agreement that the projects lacked effectiveness compared to Verra's approved forecasts.
Two of the studies passed the peer review process and another was published as a preprint.
However, Verra strongly disputed the conclusions of studies of his rainforest projects and said the methods used by scientists are unable to capture the true impact on the land, which explains the difference between the credits he approves and the emission reductions estimated by scientists.
The Carbon Standard has stated that its projects address unique local threats that a standardized approach cannot measure, and that it works with leading experts to continually update its methodologies and ensure they reflect the scientific consensus. It shortened the time projects have to update the threats they face to better capture unforeseen factors, such as the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Verra said he has already used some of the methods used by the researchers in his own standards, but does not consider them appropriate for this type of project.
Verra expressed particular concern about the use of "synthetic controls", in which the international group chose comparable areas and used them as the basis for deforestation measurements. Verra believed this was problematic because the controls might not reflect pre-project conditions and also would compare the project to a hypothetical scenario rather than a "real area, as Verra does." But the study authors argue that this doesn't quite describe their work: the comparison areas used in both cases are real areas, with deforestation levels based on rates local to the projects. The Cambridge group does not use synthetic controls.
“I worked as an auditor in these projects in the Brazilian Amazon and when I started this analysis, I wanted to know if we could trust their forecasts of deforestation. The evidence from analysis – not just synthetic controls – suggests that we can't. I want this system to work to protect rainforests. For that to happen, we need to recognize the scale of the current system's problems,” said Thales West, lead author of the international group's studies.
Erin Sills, co-author of the international group and professor at North Carolina State University, said the results were "disappointing and scary." She was one of several researchers who argued that urgent changes were needed to fund rainforest conservation.
“I'd like to find that forest conservation, which preserves local biodiversity and ecosystem services, also has a real impact on reducing climate change. If that weren't the case, it would be scary, because there would be a little less hope of reducing climate change."
David Coomes, professor of forest ecology at the University of Cambridge and senior author of a study analyzing deforestation avoided in the first five years of 40 Verra schemes, was part of the Cambridge research team. He looked at the Guardian's findings and said there was a big gap between the amount of deforestation his team estimated the projects were avoiding and what the carbon standard was endorsing.
“It is certain that there are large discrepancies between what we are calculating and what exists in their databases, and this is a cause for concern and further investigation. I think in the long run, what we want is a set of consensual methods that apply to all sites,” he said.
Julia Jones, co-author and professor at Bangor University, said the world is at a crossroads when it comes to protecting tropical forests and urgently needs to fix how emissions reductions are measured if carbon markets are to grow. .
“It's not about rocket science,” he said. “We are in an absolutely critical moment for the future of tropical forests. If we don't learn from the failures of the last decade or so, there is a risk that investors, individuals and others will move away from any kind of willingness to pay to avoid tropical deforestation and that would be a disaster."
“As someone outside the wild west of carbon markets, I need to believe that the system can be made to work, because money is needed to finance emissions reductions from forest conservation.”
Yadvinder Singh Malhi, professor of ecosystem sciences at Oxford University and Jackson senior research fellow at Oriel College, Oxford, who was not involved in the study, said two of his doctoral students looked into the analysis and found no mistake.
“This work highlights the main challenge in realizing the benefits of REDD+ in terms of climate change mitigation. The challenge is not to measure carbon stocks, but to reliably predict the future – what would have happened in the absence of Redd+ activity. And peering into the future is a dark and messy art in a world of complex society, politics and economics. The report shows that these future forecasts have been overly pessimistic in terms of baseline deforestation rates, and thus vastly overestimated the climate benefits of REDD+. Many of these projects may have brought many benefits in terms of biodiversity conservation capacity and local communities, but the impacts on climate change on which they are based are unfortunately much weaker than hoped. I wish it were otherwise, but this report is quite compelling."
Shell told the Guardian that the use of the credits is "in line with our philosophy of avoiding, reducing and only then mitigating emissions". Gucci, Pearl Jam, BHP and Salesforce declined to comment, while Lavazza said it purchased certified credits from Verra, "a world-leading certification organization," as part of the company's "serious, concrete and diligent" commitment. coffee company to reduce its carbon footprint. The company intends to deepen the project.
Fast food chain Leon no longer purchases carbon offsets from one of the projects under study as part of its mission to maximize its positive impact. EasyJet has moved away from carbon offsetting to focus its net zero work on projects such as “financing the development of new technologies for zero carbon aircraft”.
Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, has been researching carbon credits for 20 years, hoping to find a way to make the system work. He said: “The implications of this analysis are enormous. Companies use credits to claim that they have reduced emissions when most of these credits do not represent emissions reductions at all.
“Rainforest protection credits are the most common type on the market right now. And it's exploding, so these results are really important. But the problems are not limited to this type of credit. Problems exist for almost all types of credit.
“One strategy to improve the market is to show what the problems are and force registries to tighten their rules so that the market can be trusted. But I'm starting to give up that chance. I started studying carbon offsets 20 years ago, studying the problems of protocols and programs. Here I am, 20 years later, having the same conversation. We need an alternative process. The offset market is broken”.
(Excerpt from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/i-crediti-di-carbonio-fantasma-acquistati-dalle-aziende-per-compensare-la-co2/ on Sun, 22 Jan 2023 06:14:07 +0000.