Commentary
How I learned to stop worrying and love (or tolerate) carbon offsets

Two years ago, I faced a difficult decision. My university voted and then publicly pledged to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero 2040, and 75% by 2025.  I went to the vote wearing my windmill tie for good luck, having vociferously argued our emissions reductions should come from embracing renewable electricity and eliminating fossil fuel use, not from buying carbon offsets (paying someone else to reduce emissions on your behalf). Like many scholars and environmental advocates, I considered offsets almost worse than doing nothing. 

The “no offset” argument carried the day. By 2023 we had cut emissions by almost 50%. But a couple of unanticipated road blocks put our 2025 goal temporarily out of reach. Should I reverse course? It was time to dive into the controversy around offsets. 

Offsets are a lightning rod in the climate debate, but the idea is appealing because the climate doesn’t respond to where CO2 comes from, only how much there is in the air. If you can pay $10/ton to remove CO2 from the air, or to keep it from being emitted, that’s ten times better than the option that costs $100/ton. We want our climate-fighting dollars to get the most bang for the buck. 

The problem isn’t theory but practice. Using forest preservation offsets as an example, concerns include additionality (did your payment really prevent deforestation?), longevity (will the forest be cut next year?), leakage (did the landowner cut the forest next door?) and equity (who bears the cost/who gets the payment?). Indeed, recent analyses show many forest offset projects don’t actually reduce deforestation. 

For these and other reasons, many environmentalists dismiss offsets as a way to continue to burn fossil fuels while paying a pittance for projects that don’t help. When I told a journalist friend I was writing an op-ed on offsets, she sent me an article titled “Carbon offsets are a scam”.  That pretty much sums up what most of my students, and many of my colleagues, think as well.  

Up until 2023 I was mostly on their side. Now I think I was wrong. Emissions reductions have to be the main focus of climate action, but offsets should probably also be part of the toolbox. Let me explain why. 

The first step for any organization, from a university to a country, is setting an emissions timeline to get to zero emissions. But setting goals and knowing exactly how to reach them are two very different things, especially when the challenge is a difficult and multifaceted as reaching zero emissions. In our case, we transitioned to 100% renewable electricity from newly-built projects. We launched engineering studies to optimize our transition off fossil fuel combustion for heating. We are electrifying our vehicle fleet and grounds equipment, and changing the food we serve in dining halls to reduce its’ carbon footprint.  

Even with that, our emissions cuts were going to fall a bit short of our first pledge. The question was not “should we buy offsets to avoid the hard work of real change” but “should we buy offsets in addition to everything else we’re doing?”  

This dilemma is not unique; it’s faced by the majority of decision makers trying to address climate change. So, let’s take a moment to think about some benefits offsets bring, even in their current, imperfect, iteration. First, voluntary offsets are voluntary. Most organizations are not required to reduce emissions. Buying offsets puts a price on pollution that, in most of the world, can be dumped into the air for free. Importantly, and contrary to the claim offsets are used simply to avoid making cuts to emissions, recent reports suggest organizations that buy carbon offsets also spend more than others in their industry on reducing their direct emissions.  

Second, let’s acknowledge that the offset market is in its early years, and the rules are still getting worked out. You probably haven’t taken a dive into the alphabet soup of the offsets market, but the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI), the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), and others are working furiously to correct past mistakes, often in light of public scrutiny and internal disagreement. Academics are also weighing in, proposing new market models, advocating for transparency, and studying the efficacy (or not) of past efforts. No one has all the answers, but these efforts are serious attempts to get things right. 

Third, and most importantly, offsets can offer immediate emissions reductions when the physical reality of eliminating emissions is still a decade (or decades) away. Total emissions, not the date we reach zero, will determine how hot our planet gets. Emissions reductions now are thus more important for the climate than emissions reductions in the future. Offsets that don’t achieve real emissions reductions are a waste of money, but offsets that slow the emissions spigot today have great value.  

These reasons brought me back to our leadership team, this time in my solar panel tie, to argue we purchase offsets. After thinking hard about additionality, longevity, leakage and equity, we settled on offsets generated by destroying abandoned chlorofluorocarbons (strong greenhouse gases banned under a global protocol in 1987 but still available to buy). These offsets allow us to reach our 75% reduction goal and stay there for ten years, close to enough time to reengineer our campus and eliminate fossil fuel combustion. Am I 100% sure that these offsets perfectly make up for the emissions from our campus furnaces?  No. But we couldn’t get rid of the furnaces just yet, so the offsets are much better than nothing. 

In a perfect world, we would have started our campus retrofit in 1990 and be done by now. In that world, everyone could get the energy they need from low-cost emissions-free sources, could rapidly eliminate emissions from agriculture, deforestation and industry and preserve livelihoods.  

We don’t live in that world. No one knows how to completely solve climate change, and although we’re making great strides it will take time. Offsets can leverage substantial amounts of capital to keep carbon out of the atmosphere – capital that would otherwise not be utilized.  

Importantly, though, we can’t depend on offsets in perpetuity. Any organization serious about fighting climate change must switch to 100% renewable electricity, electrify vehicles, heat with high efficiency electric heat pumps, switch to zero emissions manufacturing, and reduce supply chain emissions. If, after that, they buy offsets, that’s not greenwashing. That’s doing more, which is what is needed to solve this wicked problem.