A watchdog of corporate climate commitments is cracking down on carbon credits

A leading corporate sustainability watchdog warns that carbon offset credits are a risky tactic for combating climate change. The non-profit organization faced pressure to soften its stance on carbon credits, which many companies promote as a way of dealing with pollution. This week’s findings appear to refute that effort.

Many brands have tried to sell themselves as climate-friendly, but consumers struggle to know whether these companies are actually having a positive impact. That’s where the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) comes in, developing standards for climate goals and evaluating companies based on these guidelines.

SBTi is in the process of updating its standards, which could have a major impact on the thousands of companies that have sought to legitimize their sustainability claims through the organization. Launched a report this week, summarizing the evidence it has collected on the usefulness of carbon credits acquired by companies in combating climate change. Many of them are completely “ineffective”, the report indicates.

“There may be clear risks to corporate use of carbon credits for offsetting purposes,” the report says. it says. These credits can actually hamper efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution – exactly the opposite of what corporate climate commitments are supposed to achieve.

Carbon credits are supposed to represent tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution, either avoided or removed and sequestered. They may be linked to renewable energy projects or other initiatives to prevent deforestation or plant trees that absorb and store oxygen, for example. Companies buy these credits to try to offset the impact that their own pollution has on the climate.

This allows companies to claim they are carbon neutral even if they are still emitting greenhouse gases. But carbon accounting often doesn’t work in the real world. Carbon credits have become so popular and cheap that the market has been flooded with defective credits of poorly designed projects that often overestimate the amount of carbon dioxide they avoid or retain. It’s difficult to measure how much carbon a forest contains, for example, and its trees need to remain standing for 100 years or more to prevent that CO2 from being released back into the atmosphere.

The SBTi report is based on more than 100 unique pieces of evidence that the organization has reviewed and evaluated for relevance and potential bias. This includes research articles, case studies, regulatory reviews, and other types of evidence that requested last year. The group says its conclusions apply only to the evidence it analyzed, but the report is in line with a growing number of investigations and academic to look for that cast doubt on carbon credits.

The results of the SBTi review are even more important considering that the organization reportedly faced a riot this year about its position in relation to carbon credits. In the past, SBTi did not allow companies to replace emissions reductions with carbon offset credits. There was an uproar when the group’s board of directors released a declaration in April, suggesting that the SBTi could suddenly start allowing a company to offset pollution resulting from its supply chain and the use of its products.

The ensuing commotion included officials supposedly trying to remove board members and the executive president of SBTi. At least one of SBTi’s scientific consultants resigned in protest, and its CEO stepped down in July “for personal reasons.” SBTi clarified the council’s April statement saying that it had not yet made any changes to carbon credits and that it would need to follow the organization’s protocol for updating standards.

“Today’s announcement marks a key step in the Corporate Net-Zero Standard review process,” said interim CEO Sue Jenny Ehr in a July 30 statement. declaration. SBTi says it will have a draft of its revised guidelines ready for public comment by the end of the year.

Environmental groups say the analysis SBTi released this week shows why carbon credits should play no role in companies’ sustainability plans in the future. “SBTi should withdraw its plan to allow offsets in corporate climate goals, or it risks becoming a tool for precisely this type of greenwashing,” said Jill McArdle, international corporate campaigner at Beyond Fossil Fuels, in a press release .