#Shell sold millions of 'phantom' #CarbonCredits to Canadian oil sands firms - FT
"Shell sold millions of carbon credits tied to CO2 removal that never took place to #Canada's largest oil sands companies, Financial Times reported Sunday, raising new doubts about a technology seen as important in reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
"The draft cites cases where #CarbonCredits have failed to deliver the #climate benefits they tout.
Staff also reviewed evidence showing some schemes sell more carbon credits than the projects can deliver on, or exaggerate the emission reductions they achieve."
Staff at the UN-backed Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which certifies whether a company is on track to help limit global heating to under 1.5C, have called for the CEO and board members to resign after they announced plans to allow companies to meet their climate targets with carbon offsets.
Here's some more good news on our efforts to stop global warming.
A new road resurfacing material which enables the production of net zero asphalt has been used in the UK for the first time, in County Durham.
The material incorporates a carbon negative aggregate and recycled asphalt planings from another scheme in County Durham, contributing to a circular economy and demonstrating our commitment to sustainable solutions.
Capturing CO2 to put into the building materials that we need in order to build more efficient and resilient buildings and infrastructure is a win/win!
Austria’s ‘first large-scale carbon capture’ to turn emissions into construction materials.
The ‘circular’ process will be made possible by the ‘first industrial large-scale carbon capture and utilisation (CCUS) plant in Austria’!
KLM Loses Dutch #Greenwashing Case on Climate Advertising
"#KLM makes climate claims in advertisements that are “based on vague and general statements about environmental benefits, thereby misleading consumers,” the district court of Amsterdam said in its judgment Wednesday. The carrier didn’t provide travelers with honest and concrete information, it said."
"European Union authorities have started action against 20 #airlines for misleading “#greenwashing” practices.
They said airlines needed to make clear to what extent claims that the CO2 emissions caused by a flight could be offset by climate projects or through the use of sustainable fuels can be substantiated based on sound scientific evidence."
The EU is cracking down on airlines' advertising that are misleading on:
– "#CarbonOffsets
– “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAF)
– the terms “green”, “sustainable” or “responsible”
– unverifiable "#NetZero" goals
– potentially misleading practices around the carbon emissions of specific flights
Airlines have 30 days to respond with their plans how to address this.
So, I'm quite resigned to not being able to entirely restore the reputation of carbon offsets using carbon dioxide with everyone and I entirely appreciate the damage that has been done to this budding new part of the circular economy we need to transition into.
@jgkoomey@matthewtoad43 since y'all have been some of the fiercest opponents to this new industry, I'm curious what you think of this American University's group rebranding.
I'll discuss more about their rebranding (I hate how corporate that sounds) from Carbon Removal Policy and Law Institute into the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal later in this thread, but I want to post the link to this new program to promote this circular economy down under that I also just discovered last night right away as this seems like an excellent potential paradigm shift (even if only centimeters shifting Overton Window).
To me biochar is one of the most promising Direct Air Capture Carbon Dioxide Removal technologies because it is so accessible to the most people to take part in especially all of the farmers that we need to recruit into the struggle to transition away from fossil fuels and to minimize greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon offsets are not a substitute for cutting emissions. They are a way to buy time until we've all done it and it's not up to big business or governments to get us all to stop burning fossil fuels. That's up to all of us to do as fast as we each possibly can. https://netzeroclimate.org/policies-for-net-zero/net-zero-principles/
There's a lot wrong about MicroSoft, but the efforts they and Bill Gates are taking towards helping us all to transition away from fossil fuels is undeniably laudable.
Time is non-renewable and the next several years are crucial for global carbon
removal capacity. We are approaching a crunch-moment between bottom-up
projections built on actual deployment rates and top-down models solving for
carbon removal 2050 climate scenarios.
This graph of falling prices for batteries is all the reason anyone should need to justify making the decision to pause building new LNG export terminals.
Renewable energy and storage can replace all of our fossil fuel use for electricity production, heating, and industry.
This isn't a novice-level entry into the world of biochar and its potential role in helping to reverse the global warming we've caused and the two presentations are quite bland by most modern standards, but I really like this graphic that Nikolas Hagermann shared to help explain pyrolysis. https://youtu.be/WHIVyx9-HlY?si=rKcazC7ZgMiMpKQX
I also quite liked that he showed the snowboard built using biochar that won a medal for its rider
"Carbon offsetting has undermined real climate action, given rise to human rights and Indigenous rights violations and caused severe harm to frontline communities for over two decades. Despite this, the UN climate conference (COP28) currently underway in the United Arab Emirates is set to be one of the biggest promotional events for carbon offsets ever."
There is only one planet in the known universe capable of sustaining human life, and it is rapidly becoming uninhabitable by humans. Clearly, this warrants bold action - but which bold action should we take?
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
The big one here is #CarbonOffsets, which allows companies to make money by promising not to emit carbon that they would otherwise emit. The idea here is that creating a new asset class will unleash the incredible creativity of markets by harnessing the greed of elite sociopaths to the project of decarbonization, rather of the prudence of democratically accountable lawmakers.
"Peer-reviewed [research] shows unequivocally that many projects which have sold what are known as #REDD+ (reducing #emissions from deforestation and degradation) credits have failed to reduce#deforestation."
An excellent resource for learning the basics of many #ClimateChange related topics. What percentage of GHG emissions comes from the concrete, freight transport & aviation industries? What is #CarbonCapture? #CarbonOffSets? and much much more!
There are also many lesson plans and activity resources for #HighSchool-#Undergrad level #teachers to help teach climate.
"It’s a compelling pitch: Any #emissions polluters can’t curb themselves can be outsourced to someone else.
The only problem is that #CarbonOffsets of all kinds are increasingly being outed as total bullshit."
This article sketches the wild west of carbon offsets, including this bit: "As of now, there are few protections against multiple parties staking a claim to the same credits."
After watching the Carbon Offsets episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. It makes me wonder.... without 'offsetting' how are companies realistically reducing thier footprints?
If we had to reach 50% of current emissions, offsets could make sense. Seeing as everyone, worldwide, needs to reach zero emissions, it doesn't make any sense for one company to trade emissions via offsets with another.
It's using creative accounting to solve a physics problem.
"A total of 39 of the top 50 #emission#offset projects, or 78% of them, were categorised as likely junk or worthless due to one or more fundamental failing that undermines its promised emission cuts.
Eight others (16%) look problematic, with evidence suggesting they may have at least one fundamental failing and are potentially junk, according to the classification system applied."
#ClimateChange#AirTravel#CarbonOffsets#CarbonCredits#Greenwashing: "A popular category of carbon offsets held by a number of major publicly traded companies is significantly more prone to greenwashing than previously feared, according to a new investigation of the financial instruments.
The conclusion is based on work done by a team of 14 researchers in association with the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. The study looked at so-called REDD+ credits, which represent roughly a quarter of carbon offsets issued globally.
“Many of the researchers have been studying carbon-offset quality for many years, and even we were surprised,” Barbara Haya, director at the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project and the lead researcher behind the report, said in an interview. “We found problems under every stone we turned.”"
As a teenager growing up in #Ontario, I always envied the kids who spent their summers #TreePlanting; they'd come back from the bush in September, insect-chewed and leathery, with new muscle, incredible stories, thousands of dollars, and a glow imparted by the knowledge that they'd made a new forest with their own blistered hands.
They taught a generation that resistance is futile, that anything you do to make a better future is a scam, and you're a sucker for falling for it. They planted nihilism with every tree.
That scam never ended. Today, we're sold #CarbonOffsets, a modern #PapalIndulgence. We are told that if we pay the finance sector, they can absolve us for our climate sins. Carbon offsets are a scam, a #MarketForLemons.