The 7 rules of carbon offsetting your flights

Suppose you have to fly, or you use a gas-guzzling SUV. Is there any point in carbon offsetting? Yes, and it's not as dear as you might think. But what sort should you use?

The 7 rules of offsetting are:

1. It doesn’t let you off the hook. You’ve helped global warming. And:

2. As soon as you do the thing that needs offsetting, like flying, those pesky greenhouse gas (GHG) molecules are up there helping to warm the planet.

3. Therefore: action needs to be as immediate and swift as possible.

4. So waiting around for a tree to grow is not an option esp. if you have no idea what will happen to it (fire/disease, etc.). It will take ages for it to recoup the CO2 from the skies.

5. The offsetting action needs also to be additional to what you’d do otherwise, or it makes no diff., right?

6. And it needs to start as soon as possible to start compensating for those GHGs you sent up.

7. Speed also includes the time it takes for the GHGs that would have gone into the sky if your offsetting hadn’t happened to reach the total equivalent of the GHGs caused by your flight: the faster the better.

Example: solar lanterns in Africa

I buy a single solar lantern from solaraid.org that displaces a kerosene lantern used by a family in rural Uganda for £5.

I have no idea how long it takes for that family to get the lantern, but it’s good that they do for other reasons (their health, and their kids can study after dark (6pm)).

Once they get it, I don’t know how often they’ll use it. So I don’t know how long it will take to displace the kerosene-emitted GHGs they were using to the equivalent of the GHGs caused by my flight.

But I do know that even though Jremy Leggett says that 1 lantern offsets a flight to Istanbul from London in an average of two years, the more lanterns I buy the faster the offsetting will happen.

If I buy 4, then in 6 months; 8 in 3 months. So I could buy 8 for £40. That would be a very good solution.

Example: solar roofs for community buildings in Wales

I could invest in solar panels on community buildings in egni.coop’s share issue. That's a social benefit as well as an eco-benefit.

That would be additional if I wasn’t going to do it otherwise.

Egni will put up the panels on community buildings in Wales within about 6 months, I reckon.

And you’d get a return on your investment.

Every 4kWe of PV (photovoltaic panels), will save around 1124Kg of CO2 in one year based on this: https://carbonintensity.org.uk/#regional

Ask Dan McCallum at Egni.coop how many kilowatts of PV a given amount of investment would buy if you want to know. (I made their website btw).

That would be a nice thing to do to.

Radical Carbon Offsetting: A New idea To Finance Climate Action

Last time I wrote about my despair at the idea that global leaders can ever agree to effectively slow or even reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and save their peoples from the catastrophic effects of serious climate change.

I suggested that the only way to avert disaster this would be to pay fossil fuel companies to leave the gas, oil and coal in the ground because as long as it is profitable to remove it, they will do so. Just as countries with valuable rainforests need to be paid not to fell them, so companies whose profits rest upon the extraction of fossil fuels would demand to be compensated for not doing so.

The bottom line is that concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have continued to increase regardless of any international negotiations. The challenge for Paris 2015 is to find an agreeable legal framework that every nation can sign up to that is actually effective. It does not matter what people say; only the measured results count. Given that by 2020, when any legally binding agreement takes force, we will have passed the point at which emissions can be limited to 450 ppm, it will become necessary not only to reduce emissions but also to remove carbon from the atmosphere in order to make the future safe for the majority of the human population. That is why I have come up with this proposal.

The solution I'm proposing I am calling radical carbon offsetting. Conventional carbon offsetting involves paying someone to invest in a renewable energy project. A prime example of this is the Clean Development Mechanism associated with the Kyoto Protocol, a key criteria of which is that any power generation project financed must be additional to those which would have happened anyway. But key areas of doubt have always been about whether any project can truly be additional, and whether the provision of power always leads to a thirst for more power – which may not be renewably supplied.

Radical carbon offsetting, by contrast, involves capturing carbon from the atmosphere and putting it in a place where it cannot escape, at least for the foreseeable future. Radical carbon offsetting schemes would permit the extraction of fossil fuels providing that an adequate and equivalent amount of carbon was removed from the atmosphere to that which will be released by the fossil fuels' combustion.

Fossil fuel companies would finance radical carbon offsetting schemes involving technologies some of which are traditional and some of which are currently in development and expensive but which, when they achieve scale, would be cost competitive. They would help accelerate their route to market.

Removing atmospheric carbon 

Removing atmospheric carbon at scale is the only way that the current rate of increase of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be reduced and perhaps even reversed so that it may reach again the safe limit of 350 ppm which it was around the middle of the last century. Currently it is at 400 ppm and the international negotiations that are ongoing are designed to limit the maximum concentration to 450 ppm, at which it is alleged global average temperature rises would peak at 2°C.

During the Eocene geological period between 56 and 34 million years ago atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was up to 4000 ppm. There were no ice caps and the sea level was much higher than today. The means by which it reduced to 350ppm, enabling human life to flourish, was, according to paleoceanographer and climatologist Professor Paul Pearson, through the carbonisation of calcium to create limestone. But this took millions of years.

What other, faster, techniques are there for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? Below I list a few so that you can see the potential and the wide variety of opportunities that exist:

Techniques for removing atmospheric carbon 

Building with timber

Simply building with timber creates a market for forest products and encourages their plantation. Provided that the trees are harvested when mature and not allowed to decay (emitting methane) then they will have absorbed a significant amount of atmospheric carbon. Using the timber in construction then locks away that carbon in the building fabric for at least the lifetime of the building. If we consider Tudor architecture and how many Tudor buildings survive today, we can see that timber is a durable construction material, so this lifetime can be long. And it's not just timber. Many building materials exist which are made from plants that will have absorbed atmospheric carbon, including forms of insulation, cladding, sheeting, flooring and so on.

Zero or negative carbon concrete

Concrete accounts for around 5-8 % of total CO₂ emissions in the form of greenhouse gases, making it the third highest producer of CO₂ after transport and energy generation. A major disadvantage of concrete is its large carbon footprint, one tonne of Portland cement resulting in the emission of approximately one tonne of CO₂. In conventional cement manufacture the majority of the CO₂ is released from the conversion of limestone (CaCO₃) to lime (CaO).

Whilst there are several low carbon cement alternatives in development, only two actually absorb atmospheric carbon. These are Hemcrete and magnesium silicate cement.

Building with timber and hemcrete. Courtesy Lime Technologies.

Hempcrete, a hemp-lime composite, is sold by Oxfordshire-based Hemcrete Projects. Hemp produces a very strong fibre which is used to bind the breathable lime to create a concrete-like product. The carbon locked up in the hemp compensates for carbon produced during lime manufacture, resulting in a zero-carbon building product which is excellent at regulating temperature and humidity inside buildings. The company has combined it with hemp-based insulation and wooden frames to create two products, Hembuild – used to build the wall of a building - and Hemclad, used for cladding timber frames – that can be manufactured off-site and quickly installed during construction. Both Hembuild and Hemclad products use a layer of Hemcrete on the inside, and a layer of hemp insulation on the outside, combining thermal inertia and insulation in a single product. Together they create a kit that can be used to construct a negative carbon building.

Hemcrete does not have the same tensile or resistive strength as Portland cement, but can be used for small buildings such as houses. It could not be used for the foundations of large buildings, roads, etc., so a different product will be needed. This would instead be cement made from the accelerated carbonation of magnesium silicate (commonly known as talc) under high temperature and pressure. The resulting carbonates are then heated at low temperatures to produce magnesium oxide, with the CO₂ generated being recycled back in the process.

The use of magnesium silicate eliminates the CO₂ emissions from raw materials processing. Also, the low temperatures required allow the use of fuels with low energy content or carbon intensity (i.e. biomass), thus potentially further reducing carbon emissions. Furthermore, production of the carbonates absorbs carbon dioxide by carbonating part of the manufactured magnesium oxide using atmospheric/industrial CO₂. A number of companies are developing this method. Overall, manufacturers claim that making one tonne of cement using this method absorbs up to 100kg more CO₂ than it emits, making it a carbon-negative product.

The only disadvantage of this (besides the current cost) is that magnesium silicate is not as evenly distributed throughout the world as the calcium carbonate in limestone that is used to create Portland cement.

(Aside: other techniques for making low carbon cement such as CeraTech's, which uses a process located at power plants to convert waste fly ash (otherwise landfilled) into a cement-like product, do not sequester atmospheric carbon, although they are laudable. The same is true for the high temperature cement-making process developed at George Washington University which a patent application says could be provided by concentrated solar thermal power, yielding a low-carbon cement at a price of $43/tonne.)

Zero-carbon concrete infographic, courtesy Cemfree: similar math applies to other brands.

Algae

Duke Energy is piloting a system at East Bend Natural Gas Power Station in Northern Kentucky that recycles the carbon dioxide in flue gas to grow algae in photobioreactors. The algae can later be fed into an anaerobic digester to produce methane gas that the power plant can burn for fuel, or it can be dried and processed into fish food or animal feed, or processed into biodiesel or even jet fuel. Ways to use algae as a third generation biofuel are being pioneered by many companies across the world.
Ethylene glycol

Liquid Light of Monmouth Junction, New Jersey is also intending to capture carbon dioxide from power plants' combustion processes using a technology currently being prototyped to produce ethylene glycol. This is a building block of products as diverse as polyester fibre, plastic bottles and antifreeze.

Acrylic acid

Dioxide Materials of champaign, Illinois, has another prototype in development aimed at producing acrylic acid – a constituent of paint and glue – from carbon dioxide. It has partnered with glue maker 3M to bring the product to market.

Carbon capture and storage

The last three examples place carbon capture and storage, the current great white hope of the fossil fuel industry, in perspective. Why go to all the trouble of piping the carbon dioxide to a nearby suitable geological repository when you can turn it into something profitable right on your doorstep, one might ask? The great expectations pinned upon CCS in the past have proved relatively chimeric because of the cost: power produced with add-on CCS is at least 20% more expensive – if not double the price. Yet the algae and glue- or plastic-making chemicals do not sequester the carbon – they turn it into a form which is temporarily out of the atmosphere but to which it can return (with algae almost immediately), so merely displacing fossil fuels. An advantage, true, but not as great as putting it out of reach for a century or more.
My proposal for radical carbon offsetting could provide a way of financing some of these projects and more. It would encourage innovation and new markets. I love the concept becaude it is a win-win-win solution: it has at least three benefits:

1. we tackle global warming,
2. create employment, and
3. produce useful and valuable products that displace the need to burn fossil fuels.

To make the idea work, a global market for carbon with an appropriate price attached would be needed, plus, of course, a legal agreement that all countries in the world must sign up to. It could for example form part of the agreement being progressed for post-2015 by the UNFCCC. A summary of progress of the negotiations is here and the US' ideas for it are here. It's a distant hope for me, but at least it provides a potential route out of despair.

Carbon market in a slump as climate talks continue in Bonn

As world environment ministers and representatives meet in Bonn for climate talks this week, investors in the carbon market are hoping, probably in vain, for some kind of certainty as to what will happen after 2012.

After five consecutive years of robust growth, the total value of the global carbon market has stalled at $142 billion due to uncertainty as to what will replace the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) after next year. The recession has also had an effect on the market.

A report from the World Bank, The State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2011, covering the last five years up to 2010 and issued last week, shows that the value of the primary CDM market fell by double digits for the third year in a row, ending lower than it was in 2005, the first year of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Assigned Amount Unit (AAU) market, which grew in 2009 with strong governmental support, shrank as well in 2010. Finally, the market that had grown most in 2009 allowances under the U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) saw that year's gains erased in 2010.

This meant that the European Union's Allowances (EUAs) market became especially important. EUAs accounted for 84% of global carbon market value last year.

If you take into account the value of secondary CDM transactions, their share, driven by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme rose to 97%, dwarfing the remaining sections of the market. If it was not for Europe's commitment, virtually nothing would be happening elsewhere in the world.

Voluntary carbon market

There is good news, however, in another report released last week about the state of the voluntary carbon market, which posted a 34% gain in 2010, trading a record 131 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtC02e).

This is an annual report by Ecosystem Marketplace and Bloomberg New Energy Finance which gathers data from almost 300 market participants.

While the US accounted for the majority of trading activity, worth $424 million in total, market growth was strongest in developing countries.

Voluntary offsetting is due to businesses' CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) commitments. These markets are investing particularly in renewable energy and forests.

The need for political commitment

Loss of political momentum on setting up new cap and trade schemes in several developed economies such as the United States and in the Far East, is a further reason for the decline in the non-voluntary sector.

Last week, California's proposed cap and trade scheme was challenged in the courts and is likely to be delayed by a year.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary for the UN Convention on Climate Change, lambasted the US for inaction on climate change at the Carbon Expo in Barcelona last week.

Andrew Steer, World Bank Special Envoy for Climate Change, summed up the message of the report at the Expo. "The global carbon market is at a crossroads. If we take the wrong turn we risk losing billions of lower cost private investment and new technology solutions in developing countries. This report sends a message of the need to ensure a stronger, more robust carbon market with clear signals.”

The report's authors predict that in the next two years the difference between the gross demand for the cumulative supply of carbon credits generated under the Kyoto mechanisms will be below $140 million, and virtually all of this demand will be from Europe.

Looking beyond 2012, although potentially the demand for emission reductions could reach 3 billion tons or more, so far the only certain demand is from Europe estimated at just 1.7 billion tonnes.

This means there is little incentive for project developers to invest further and create a future supply of emissions reductions.

This is the effect that political uncertainty is having on political and business efforts to combat climate change at a time when its threat is reported to be even greater than previously assumed.

"Carbon market growth halted at a particularly inopportune time: 2010 proved to be the hottest year on record, while global emission levels continued to rise relentlessly,observes Alexandre Kossoy, World Bank Senior Financial Specialist.

“At the same time, other national and local low-carbon initiatives have picked up noticeably in both developed and developing economies. Collectively, they offer the possibility overcome regulatory uncertainty and signal that, one way or another, solutions that address the climate challenge will emerge."

Eight countries receive $2.8m

The World Bank's response is centred around the $100 million Partnership for Market Readiness, launched in Cancun in December 2010, which aims to support mitigation activities.

Last week it dispersed its first funding to eight countries: Chile, China, Columbia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, and Turkey. Each received an initial grant of $350,000 to help design, pilot, and eventually implement market-based instruments for greenhouse gas mitigation. They will now develop a "Market Readiness Proposal" to detail their plans. Another seven countries will receive grants shortly.

The fund is supported by ten contributors Australia, the European Commission, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States which together have pledged nearly US $70 million.

A number of the World Bank's carbon funds and facilities, such as the Carbon Partnership Facility, the second tranche of the Umbrella Carbon Facility, and a new facility for low-income countries currently under development, also respond to future needs by supporting scaled up mitigation and purchasing carbon credits beyond 2012.

Furthermore, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility is supporting REDD+ initiatives which, to date, have not been included under the CDM. The Bank sees carbon markets as an important and versatile tool to provide incentives for a shift to lower carbon development paths.

Emissions credits surplus means developed countries need do nothing

Was Cancun a success? Well, countries, except brave Bolivia who dared to quote the science, did agree on something - which is an achievement of sorts.

But although progress was made on a number of issues to do with accounting for a nation's emissions and verifying their actions, none of the decisions made at Cancun are yet sufficient to lead to quantifiable changes.

According to Climate Action Tracker, which provides an independent peer-reviewed assessment of emission reduction proposals, the largest factors limiting emissions savings are:

Surplus emissions allowances
Countries will currently be able to sell and buy allowances originally meant for the period up to 2012 beyond that date. If so, this could mean that taken together, developed countries wouldn't need to do anything further to curb emissions until at least 2020. This would add about 3-9% relative to 1990 to the emission limits, and credits would still not be exhausted until 2025-2030.

Forests and land use
The options for accounting for the impact of a country's forests, land-based emissions, deforestation and reforestation are not finally agreed. By 2020 they could cause a nation's emissions to be 3% more than they would otherwise be relative to 1990.

Japan's get-out
Japan has a relatively ambitions 25% reduction target below 1990 by 2020, but it is likely to be met by offsetting in developing countries. As these actions would be counted by those countries, this would mean double-accounting.

American inaction
There's scant chance of federal greenhouse gas legislation in the USA. This means their 2050 target is unlikely to be met. Double counting of offsets is a problem for America and its partners too.

The gap between hope and action
With business carrying on as at present, global emissions by 2020 will be 56 billion tonnes CO2equiv/year. To limit warming to 2°C or 1.5°C, they would need to be in the range of 44-40 billion tonnes by 2020, a reduction of 22-29%, or 12-16 billion tonnes, at a rate of over two billion tonnes per year.

The promises made at Cancun lie in a range from low ambition to high. If the lowest were attained by 2020, there would be a reduction of just 3 billion tonnes, leading to an average global temperature raise that is highly unacceptable, of 3.2oC.

If the highest ambition targets were reached in 2020, this would only add another 1.3 billion tonnes of cuts, to 51.7 billion tonnes per year.

The gap is therefore between 8 and 12 billion tonnes per year in 2020.

How can the gap be closed?
The Climate Action Tracker has identified several options which would achieve more than enough to close the gap:

• The decision on how many emissions allowances could be carried over by nations after 2012 has yet to be taken. Therefor it is possible to eliminate new surplus emissions ‘built into’ 2020 reduction pledges; options for this are included in the negotiating text
• Remove crediting for forestry and land use that allow developed countries to increase their emissions
• Reduce international aviation and marine emissions up to half of the projected levels in 2020
• Increase ambition level of developed countries as a group - in line with the European Union's aspiration - to a 30% cut below 1990 in 2020 (without forestry credits)
• Ensure reductions of emissions in developing countries of 1.5 - 6.2 billion tonnes
• Halt deforestation by 2020.

Crucially, global long-term emission reductions are required as well: at least 50% below 1990 by 2050. The UK's Climate Change Committee advocated 60% last week. The Cancun climate conference did not include a goal for 2050.

Why carbon offsetting should be a last resort

I've published a revised article on this topic here: Cyberium website