By Tejas Ewing, Carbon Markets Coordinator, the New Economics Foundation, London
VOLUNTARY CARBON OFFSETTING — the process of purchasing an emissions reduction generated elsewhere, to deal with an organisation’s own internal emissions is perhaps the most controversial topic in today’s active carbon marketplace. Having been hailed as the only valid market solution to climate change and criticised as being akin to ‘selling indulgences in the catholic church’, or referred to as the ‘morning after pill of the environmental movement’. Many organisations have begun to offset some of their emissions in the hope that this will help to improve their reputation as a ‘green’ organisation and improve the marketability of certain products.
For example, Land Rover recently sold its new line of off-road vehicles with a carbon offset included, so that all of the emissions for the lifetime of the car were effectively ‘neutralised’ by the investment by Land Rover in renewable energy projects in China. It was claimed that these projects effectively reduced emissions in China in line with the projected emissions caused by use of the vehicle. This was seen as somewhat of a marketing coup for the company because it could then brand itself as the first ‘carbon neutral’ vehicle. The implied message was that a Prius might have lower emissions, but you could instead buy a Land Rover and simply pay for the emissions to be reduced elsewhere, more efficiently. The idea perhaps was to have your cake and eat it too.
However, such offset initiatives can also backfire. The band Coldplay wanted to make one of their live concert tours ‘carbon neutral’ by investing in offset projects worldwide to ‘neutralise’ their emissions from flying and putting on a carbon intensive tour. Unfortunately, they chose to invest in some projects that involved planting mango trees in India. These projects were poorly designed and did not provide adequate support to the villagers in India that were asked to maintain the trees. As a result many of the trees died, the local people were unhappy, and Coldplay looked bad.
What this highlights, from a marketing and branding perspective, is that if your company aims to pursue carbon offsetting, or carbon neutrality, you must do it carefully and think hard about your decisions and how to deal with your carbon emissions in a holistic way.
A well constructed offset project can add value to consumer goods and enhance your reputation, while a poorly designed offset initiative just looks as if you are trying to fool the public.
So what can you do?
Within this complex mix of opinions, however, one thing remains constant. There is an expectation that organisations must have a valid plan of action to deal with their own carbon footprints. A recent review by the Carbon Disclosure Project showed that 75% of the 500 largest companies in the world are now measuring their carbon footprint, and taking action to actively reduce it. Consumers are
beginning to expect this, and it doesn’t pay to be left behind on planning to reduce the emissions of your organisation in order to
improve your brand value and reputation with consumers.
To many, Carbon Offsetting is one valid strand of action for an emissions plan, as it allows institutions to create more robust tactics to deal with their carbon footprints. However, carbon offsetting is only one part of a complex and valid planning system which must include real and internal emissions reductions. Carbon offsetting can never be the only pillar of your environmental strategy!
Any organisation thinking of purchasing carbon offsets must first put significantly more effort into reducing direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, before any offsetting strategy is implemented. It is clear that offsetting without carbon reduction is nothing more than an exercise in guilt reduction, false publicity and futility. Therefore, do not buy offsets until you have a structured and published plan to reduce your organisation’s emissions.
What is also clear, though, is that when it comes to unavoidable emissions, such as flights that must be taken, there must be a mechanism for proactively providing solutions, because for any organisation there will be some unavoidable and irreducible emissions.
Carbon Offsetting has attempted to provide solutions for these unavoidable emissions, but like any new industry there is much confusion and controversy.
Even if one is reducing emissions before undertaking offsetting, there are further pitfalls. There are significant risks associated with any offsetting strategy, and they primarily involve the decision over what offsets to purchase. Offsets purchased from the wrong provider may never be delivered, or the projects might fail, resulting in wasted money and significant reputational risks to the purchaser. The key paradigm for judging quality is known as VALIDS.
Keep an eye open for next month’s MLT where the criteria for VALIDS will be revealed and the article will be concluded.
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