Do Carbon Offsets Cause Emissions to Rise?

Created by: My Green Cleaner :: 3 years ago

emissions, offset, pollution

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"Would you not just by more certificates to ensure you can increase production which means increased profits?"

By: My Green Cleaner :: 3 years ago

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"I don't know. Perhaps you would be better off asking, "Would you be less concerned with cutting your GHG emissions if you thought you were carbon neutral or negative through your offsetting?"
One thing offsetting is unlikely to do is prevent resource depletion. We are likely to be the first generation to see the end of cheap oil and cheap food with all that that entails. It is a crisis that is imminent and is every bit as serious as Climate Change."

By: Crunchtourism :: 3 years ago

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"I don't think so, since every enterprise is looking to reduce cost and improve profit then how can you burn more energy and pay more for it and still satisfy your share holders?"

By: VeryPC Pete :: 3 years ago

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"No, they don't per se. In some cases projects in developing countries have been CDM certified without meeting additionality (e.g. hydro electricity projects that were going to be built anyway) and carbon credits have been sold giving companies permission to emit CO2. Obviously companies must make every effort to reduce emissions and the role of offsets is to compensate for the remainder, not as a licence to emit. To reduce emissions we need to turn away from fossil fuels - btw, the question of resource depletion is remote. We have enough coal and oil to take us well to the end of the century, and the question is to legislate so that resource rich countries stop production because obviously their financial incentive is to continue doing what they are doing."

By: mikel :: 3 years ago

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"My comment did not say we don't have substantial reserves of oil, coal and gas. What I said was that the era of cheap, oil, coal and gas is effectively over. The easily accessible fossil fuels have gone. The cost of extracting the remaining reserves will escalate. When I say cost, I do not just mean financial cost, I also mean the energy and resources that need to be expended to recover a quantity of fossil fuel."

By: Crunchtourism :: 3 years ago

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"Hi Crunchtourism, it's difficult to know how the commodities will go in future - we'd be rich if we knew with any certainty. To take an example, oil prices -- if you take the NYMEX crude oil index you see the price has been rising lately to $57 (from a trough in January) recovering from a steady decline since a huge peak of around $150 in May (roughly). Some analysts say it might go down to $20 - who knows? And who is to say it won't stay low for a long time? It's down to a complex mix of politics, financial speculation and uncertain events in the future. About coal, ex: China has coal to burn for centuries to come, that's why it's building coal-fired stations every week. It has control over its own markets so it will have cheap coal for as long as we are around. As the financial dissincentive is not there, w need to restrict the use of fossil fuels through Copenhagen and strict emission cut targets."

By: mikel :: 3 years ago

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"Hi Mikel, The cost of production of crude oil is around $50 so a price of $20 is unlikely. You say you don't know what the price of commodities will do in the future, I can answer that; they will go up in price. On Earth they are a finite resource, they will run out. The short term fluctuations are currently due to a worldwide financial meltdown caused the huge price drop. You cannot say that because the price has dropped now that the long term price will not be upwards. That is the sort of argument Climate Change deniers use, for example we have just had the coldest winter in 25 years, does that mean that Global Temperatures will not rise in the next 50 years? Short term fluctuations are not reliable in predicting long term trends.
When predicting future outputs of of a mineral, it is not a simple matter of dividing the total recoverable reserves by the current annual production rate. China for example has the second largest reserves of coal after the USA, but will reach peak production between 2015 ad 2030. Production will then decline quite rapidly as the coal will be deeper and less easy to extract. The thick easily mined seams are always mined first. The coal from the remaining reserves will be substantially more expensive to recover. Couple this with the International Energy Authorities' prediction that peak oil production will occur before 2020. The massive rise in crude oil spot prices in 2008 (to $147) may have been in part due to speculators, but they could not have moved the price so drastically, if there was a huge excess of supply over demand. What happened last year is just a taste of what is to come, when the world reaches peak production of fossil fuel."

By: Crunchtourism :: 3 years ago