Carbon offsetting is just lazy

Carbon offsetting allows countries and companies, keen to reduce their carbon impact, to buy or facilitate carbon reductions elsewhere in the world and take credit for it. This practice is done by many of the countries (such as Norway) and companies (such as Yahoo) with aggressive carbon reduction targets who find that reducing their own carbon emissions would be much more expensive than say planting trees or funding a renewable energy project in a developing country.

The practice is criticized on moral and practical terms. Morally, critics argue that carbon offsets allow developed countries and leading companies to escape the real consequences and costs of sustainable behavior. And practically there have been considerable problems determining 'additionality' or the degree to which the purchasing company indeed makes a carbon reduction that would not have occurred without its support.

Despite these limitations, however, the practice also has significant potential benefits. Firstly, it transfers wealth for low carbon investment to developing countries and companies. The most developed companies provide the funding necessary for low-carbon investment in those countries and companies least able to pay. That's a genuine opportunity. And secondly, carbon offsetting is seen as a necessary mechanism for cost efficiency. By allowing companies to 'shop' for the cheapest carbon reductions, the total cost of moving towards a low carbon economy is minimized.

Despite increased use of carbon offsetting over the past few years, little evidence has emerged to settle the debate over the merit or damage of the practice. Today there is an ideological stalemate between those for and against.

However, the recent anecdotal evidence that economic pressures are forcing companies such as Yahoo to abandon offsetting and instead to re-focus on genuine eco-innovation to meet their carbon commitments lends an interesting angle to the debate. It shows, in my opinion, that offsetting is lazy. The recent changes suggest that offsetting has been used as an easy escape for carbon-ambitious companies and countries, attractive when cash is in abundance.

If this is true, it is potentially crippling to offset supporters. Firstly, it suggests that offsetting stymies real innovation. Secondly, it shows that many of the cost-efficiency benefits of offsetting might be over-stated. This should not be surprising as the astonishing amounts of efficiency opportunities that exist already prove the limitations of neo-liberal economic assumptions about company behavior.

As more evidence emerges, the carbon-offset debate may become more sophisticated. If offsetting is indeed lazy behavior, we might want to end it altogether.