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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Fred’s Footprint: Offsetting this blog's emissions

I have been thinking for a while about offsetting my carbon emissions. There are lots of schemes out there advertising for our money. But what do we get in return?

The promise is a painless panacea for our pollution. Send some money and the offsetter will plant trees that soak up your CO2, or invest in some renewable energy to cut out coal burning somewhere. Hey presto, you have negated your emissions and expunged your environmental guilt.

Or maybe not. Some say it is all a con.

It seems to me there are three ways things could go wrong. There is out and out fraud - the people take your money and disappear. There are well-intentioned schemes that just don’t achieve the offsetting they promise - maybe the trees die or the wind turbines break down. And, hardest to unravel, there are schemes that subsidise forestry or renewable energy projects that were going to happen anyway.

One notorious case tracked down by my New Scientist colleague Rob Edwards involved people paying to plant trees on a Scottish island that were already in the ground and paid for.

But I suspect the backlash against offsetting has gone too far. And my guilt is getting serious.

Over the last year, I have been travelling the world to find out where my food and clothes and other stuff comes from. The findings have been appearing here as Fred’s Footprint and will be published next February in my book, Confessions of an Eco Sinner.

Please be assured that I am well aware of the irony of expanding my carbon footprint by going round the world to research my footprint. I can only leave it up to you to decide whether it was worth it.

Anyhow, it's confession time. How much did I fly? Gulp. Over 12 months it worked out at 180,000 kilometres. I decided I had to try and offset this. So I took some advice and made my own enquiries - see, for instance, my feature in New Scientist six months ago - and decided to place my offset money with Climate Care.

This is a non-profit company based in Oxford in the UK, which recently announced that its offsets had passed 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. I have met its boss Mike Mason several times at climate conferences and know he is serious. But being serious is one thing; being effective is another.

Climate Care’s online calculator reckons that my 180,000 kilometres of air travel made me responsible for 22.5 tonnes of CO2 emissions. On 29 August, my credit card gave them £168.75, their price for offsetting those emissions. And later that day I sent their press office an email notifying them that I intend to try and track how my money is spent, and asking if they were willing to cooperate. I said I planned to report my findings regularly here.

The first signs are good. I shall be in Oxford in a couple of weeks, finding out how they operate. But that will be just the start. I shall report back on what I find. Warts and all. If they waste my money you’ll know about it.

Fred Pearce, senior environment reporter


Dear Fred,

I think that carbon off-setting can be compared to waste recycling. Just as the recycling is "good" (when done properly), the "best" is not to produce waste. Thus, carbon off-setting can be good, when done properly, but the best option is not to produce the carbon emmisions. More to say, tree planting is probably "alibistic" solution to carbon off-setting, as the trees only suck-up the "recent" carbon, and not fossil carbon. Beeing not an expert on carbon off-setting, I would support the idea of alternative energy sources sudsidies, for instance...

To conclude, the carbon off-setting in the most strict sense is not possible.


Alexander Ac
By Anonymous Anonymous on September 11, 2007 7:50 PM  
Dear Fred,
I believe that most of the offset schemes are waste of money and effort. Planting trees has zero net effect, they take CO2, but through rotting leaves and wood release methane gas which is up to 15 times more damaging than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
You as a scientist, I suggest, should with the other likeminded scientists make your contribution to the research how to increase effectiveness of the ocean plankton CO2 uptake by spraying it with iron compounds . Oceans’ plankton as a link in the natural chain in CO2 cycle locks it for at least few million years.
"Three and a half tonnes of dissolved iron were added to a 50 square kilometre patch of water. The bloom of microscopic algae that followed caused a reduction of 10% in dissolved carbon dioxide during the two weeks, in the process taking up about 1000 tonnes of carbon and resulting in an increased uptake of the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere."
All the best with regards from M. Vukcevic
By Anonymous Anonymous on September 11, 2007 8:58 PM  


In the 70's it was Ice Age, now the "Chicken Littles" are crying Green House. Bah!

There were dairy farms in Greenland 1000 years ago, grape vines and wineries in Vinland (Nova Scotia) and Scotland too. TOO cold for either today.

When the planet warms up to the levels of 1000 years ago and looks to continue its warming . . . let me know. It *might* be time to do something, maybe. Otherwise we are being sold a bill of goods that has no basis in reality.
"It seems to me there are three ways things could go wrong."

I suggest a fourth. At least one study this year suggested that planting more trees could do more harm than good if done in temperate zones instead of the tropics.
CO2 Emissions and other green house gasses must have some effect on the planet. You just have to look out the window and see sources of solid liquid or gas fuel sources from the ground and converting it into CO2 gas into the atmosphere. How can this be the same it was 1000yrs ago?
Your a rational man, don't give your money to these idiots!
If you really feel bad about it make out a cheque to donate all you cash to the Malthusian Youth Care Amazonian Safeguarding Homelands cause (MY CASH). Alternately don't travel anywhere, don't experience the human condition and don't let anyone see what you can do by being a decent journalist - I bet you last less than a minute. Try to offsett those kind of issues? What you should ask is of all the thousands of miles I travelled did I convince some teenager somewhere to look at the world rationally and did I incite them to do something with themselves that might even lead to being an honest journalist/politician/scientist/life changer?
Paying large sums of money to bleeding hearts in NW Europe to plant trees and mange land in the way THEY feel is correct is not the answer. Further more all these tress that are being planted, does anyone want them, does any one like them, are they taking farmland out of our hands so we produce less food in a world that needs it? Boy, the issues are going complex here! One thing for sure is don't give your cash to these people. Invest it in energy efficient kitchen appliances, convert your car to ethanol, get rid of your car, invest in a compost loo, compost your kitchen waste for biogas, grow your own food. There are much more practical solutions. Bottom line is there is usually a banker behind these schemes or a party political adviser (is Monbiot or Zac there anyone?) If banks are there they want your cash.
Don't be guilty about being human, there business plan depends on it
A poet once told me, don't knock the nutters (he was more descriotive than me here) in life because thats where he got most of his material. I cling to this ideal constantly with this new age garbage.
Iron in the sea is something I often hold up as the pinnacle of new age nutterdom. However, humanity excels itself even here and people have suggested pumping urea into the sea. So why not abate climate catastrophe by peeing in the sea and shorten the supply chain, get closer to the customer, know your stakeholders etc. Do your bit out there! white light, new age (which if put together makes newage which is very close to sewage which about sums it up and makes another potential issue for the surfers out there)
Keep karma, don't worry your not that important in the scheme of things
By Anonymous Anonymous on September 12, 2007 2:04 PM  
I'm interested to see what Climate Care comes up with.

Carbon offsetting - sure it's better not to emit, but there are some schemes which do have additionality and are carbon-wise and socially positive (eg rural electrification using PV panels). Unfortunately these are probably the more expensive ones.

There are some which just buy EU-ETS credits out of the trading pool - have you considered that? Not glamourous- a lot are produced by making heavy industry slightly more efficient - but very cheap (a couple of euros/tonne) and at least they have been verified for additionality.
The only way I can think to properly offset carbon from fossil fuels is to sequester it and put back where it came from, underground. I to travel extensively by plane as I live in Hawaii and have grappled with my eco-guilt. Can CO2 be sucked out of the air, compressed, and then buried near a continental subduction zone to be rendered? I don't know, but that's what I want.
By Anonymous Anonymous on September 12, 2007 6:55 PM  
Carbon offsetting schemes may be well-intentioned but they are not a serious solution to carbon emissions. What incentive is there to curb our polluting habits if we can assuage our guilt by contributing to an offsetting scheme?

The real question is if the offsetting is effective in some may or if it fixes the problem caused by the pollution we created in the first place.

Lets say that everyone who flies by plane contributes to a carbon offsetting scheme. That's millions of people contributing - what kind of impact will this have? Will it affect global warming? Does it mean we can continue to fly without constraint? (Obviously not.) It all sounds too simplistic doesn't it?

I'm all for planting trees in general, but not in the belief that it mitigates the pollution caused by flying and other means.

a BBC report in Feb this year reported that air travel accounted for 70% of the transport sector's climate change impact. In the UK, the transport sector contributes about a quarter of CO2 emissions.

The Greenhouse hypothesis supporters out there can do something very positive - eschew all air travel! Return to the days of sail. It sure would slow down your output, Fred, but maybe then our technology-driven lifestyles could return to a far less hectic and energy-conserving pace. With all those hours saved keeping up with the pundit's missives, why I might even get time to go and do something I love.... like sailing..... bye..... ;o)
By Anonymous chemikazi on September 13, 2007 9:38 PM  
Hi Fred,

How much has peat been considered as a means to off-set CO2 production? In the UK we have vast peat reserves and a large number are drying out. By drying out they can release up to 8 tons of CO2 per hectare per year while a wet active peat bog can absorb 0.27 tons per Ha per year. Unlike trees peat bogs can go on accumulating peat for thousands of years storing all that Carbon. Perhaps at the end of your eco-sinning life you could be put to rest 'peat-bog man' like to ensure no methane or CO2 release... ;-)
Regards, Dan
Why are there no bog women?
Fred Pearce responds: A good set of questions to take to Climate Care. Thanks.
I must take issue with M Vukcevic on plankton. Algae blooms may soak up CO2 short-term, but what happens later? It is far from clear whether the sink lasts more than a few weeks.
Clouds and dust? Sure, there's lots we don't know; but science is all about trying to find out and acting on what we know -- not using complexity as an excuse for inaction.
"Chicken littles": well we are up to temperatures of a thousand years ago and, given what physicists have known for 200 years about the heat-trapping abilities of CO2, it is a no-brainer that we are heading on up.
Ed Young is right about temperate trees -- probably. But tropical plantations can do good, though most offsetters are moving out of the trees business now.
"Bleeding hearts", "new age garbage": give us a break! I'll ask CC about buying ETS credits. Pear-bog man: I like that. -- Fred
By Anonymous Anonymous on September 20, 2007 2:30 PM  
As I'm in the middle of a 'round-the-world trip myself, I'm very interested in what you find. My big concern is the additionality mentioned by someone earlier. Your results will determine how I deal with my own CO2 offsetting. I'll be watching :-) Thanks.
Why do we have to plant more trees where we can do away with Co2 emmission devices and replace them with devices like Electra G.T. EV's that run on pure electricity no batteries needed at all. Don't get me wrong I love nature and trees with a passion why do we have to comprimise with damaging gasses like Co2 while we have the sollution on our doorstep
Hi Fred

Carbon Offsetting has come in for alot of critisism recently. We believe that if we can gain some transparency in the offset market some of the sceptics may be able to see that on occasions where reductions at source are not possible, credible offsets do have a role to play in cutting carbon emissions.

We have recently set up a new website http://www.ourcarbonnation.com to help those consumers who do wish to offset their carbon emissions choose a provider. The site has just started out and we cover issues such as price, administration costs etc. It is our intention to move the site forward by introducing detailed evalutations of providers covering important issues such as additionality and verification.

We will follow your communications with Climate Care with great interest.

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