How did a good idea go so wrong? Carbon offsets with Mark Trexler

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Carbon offsets are everywhere – a $2 billion dollar industry that’s set to grow even more as the US is even incorporating them in its effort to fulfill international climate pledges. Yet in the thirty years since they were created, they have not been proven to work. How did such a good idea go wrong and why is it so sticky? In this episode of Zero, Akshat talks to Mark Trexler of The Climatographers, who helped build the first carbon offset program in 1988, about what went wrong with offsets and if there’s any way to fix them.

Read more about the dodgy world of carbon offsets in Bloomberg’s three part investigation.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I am Akshatrati. This week, Labradoodles, carbon offsets and the Emperor's new clothes.
0:09.0	Think of the last time you bought a plane ticket and the airline offered you the opportunity
0:24.6	to spend some more money to offset the emissions from your trip. If you didn't take it, you did
0:31.2	right. That offer is part of a market known as the voluntary carbon market worth $2 billion
0:37.1	today. And it hasn't really
0:39.1	proved to work. It's a place where you and companies like Shell can buy credits from projects
0:44.3	such as a solar facility in a developing nation that, in theory, will avoid putting carbon into
0:50.4	the atmosphere. At face value, these offsets might seem like a good thing. We want
0:55.9	more solar plants. But the difficulty is in proving whether paying for these offsets was
1:01.2	the reason the solar plant was built. Many of these green projects would have gone ahead anyway,
1:07.2	and thus your offset has not really provided any additional carbon benefit.
1:12.5	It is why experts have pointed out that most of the credits on the current voluntary
1:16.5	carbon market don't work.
1:19.4	Still, as more companies sign up for net zero plans, rather than actually reducing emissions,
1:24.8	they find it easier to buy cheap offsets instead.
1:28.2	And the voluntary carbon market will get a boost because it's receiving a stamp of approval
1:32.8	from the US government itself.
1:35.2	At COP 27, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, announced a new
1:41.3	offsets program that will help developing countries transition to clean energy
1:45.8	through purchases made by big corporate polluters.
1:49.3	This was an unenviable task, especially in front of a global audience of environmental experts.
1:55.7	You hear him acknowledge this throughout the conference.
	...

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