“Continuing to stand behind the fallacy that carbon offsetting approaches will get us out of the climate crisis is now untenable”
Scientists advise the University of Exeter to ditch carbon offsets.
Three climate and Earth scientists have advised the University of Exeter to ditch carbon offsets. Instead, they argue, the university should focus on cutting emissions.
The three scientists are: James Dyke, Associate Professor in Earth System Science; Jamie Shutler, Professor of Earth Observation and Climate; and Peter Cox, Director, Global Systems Institute, all at the University of Exeter. They sit on an official University of Exeter panel advising the university on offsetting.
£14.7 million deal with Shell
In May 2019, the University of Exeter declared an Environment and Climate Emergency.
Then, in November 2022, the University announced a five-year net zero collaboration with Shell, worth £14.7 million. Exeter is working with Shell on a nature-based solutions project in Brazil called “Carbon Storage in Pasture through Ecological Restoration”.
Following the announcement of the collaboration with Shell, James Dyke wrote that he was not involved in any decisions about this collaboration. “I think it is a mistake,” he added.
Beyond reputational risks to the University of Exeter, this new partnership with Shell risks providing a major oil and gas company with a social licence to maintain its core fossil fuel operations. Shell continues to develop new oil and gas fields. This will liberate carbon that will further increase atmospheric concentrations and drive warming beyond 1.5°C. The only way that we can avoid further dangerous global warming is to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Proposals of mass tree planting or other so-called “nature based solutions” at gigaton scale are dangerous fantasies.
In October 2023, DeSmog reported that the Shell deal meant that the University of Exeter received more money from fossil fuel corporations than any other university in the UK.
A week after the DeSmog report, Just Stop Oil protester George Simonson occupied the roof of the entrance to the University of Exeter Forum building in protest at the collaboration with Shell. He threw cans of red and orange paint over the windows.
Simonson is currently serving a two-year jail sentence for climbing gantries over the M25 to disrupt traffic in a protest aimed at forcing the government to ban new fossil fuel exploration.
“Carbon offsetting should be removed from plans to reach net zero”
In January 2024, the Offsetting Task and Finish Group was set up at the University of Exeter, chaired by Peter Cox. The Group was intended to “Oversee the development of a robust and transparent carbon offsetting strategy (including carbon sequestration)”, and “Consider issues associated with additionality, permanence, leakage, biodiversity, livelihoods and social justice.”
In recent article for The Conversation, Dyke, Shutler, and Cox write that, “We have concluded that carbon offsetting should be removed from plans to reach net zero.”
They give the example of REDD to show how carbon credits can be created. Cutting down and burning a forest would emit a large amount of carbon dioxide. If the forest is protected instead of destroyed, the managers of the forest can generate carbon credits. These can then be sold to organisations or individuals to offset their carbon pollution.
However, as they point out, “carbon offsetting is beset with problems”. They link to a January 2024 UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) note about carbon offsetting, which states that,
Ensuring that credits truly represent carbon reduction or removal is complex and uncertain. It can be difficult to determine that carbon would have been emitted otherwise and whether any carbon storage is permanent.
The POST note highlights the risks of carbon offsetting, including impacts on human rights, and the problems of additionality, over-estimation of credits generated, leakage, permanence, and double-counting.
“No evidence that offsetting could make a meaningful contribution”
Dyke, Shutler, and Cox reviewed the evidence for offsetting. They discussed offsetting with industry professionals and academics.
They write that,
We found no evidence that offsetting could make a meaningful contribution to our efforts to get to net zero. Instead, we concluded that offsetting is probably ineffective — and possibly a dangerous distraction as it can lead to inaction on actual emissions reduction. We concluded that efforts should focus on working out how to leave more fossil fuels safely in the ground.
They acknowledge that “ditching offsets will blow a large hole in our university’s plan to reach net zero”. But, they point out, universities have a social responsibility “to lead by example and to act on the knowledge that their communities have produced”.
It’s worth adding that a net zero target achieved by buying carbon offsets is not zero. In 2021, James Dyke co-wrote an article criticising net zero. Dyke and his co-authors write that, “the idea of net zero has licensed a recklessly cavalier ‘burn now, pay later’ approach which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar.”
Dyke, Shutler, and Cox make a series of recommendations the universities and other organisations should carry out instead of offsetting:
Exclude carbon offsetting from any plans to reach net zero
Use nature-based solutions such as habitat creation and rewilding to help restore ecosystems and biodiversity rather than absorbing our carbon emissions
Redeploy funds that have been put aside for offsetting for activities that result in emissions reductions, and so leave more fossil fuels in the ground
Work with suppliers and local communities to help them decarbonise more quickly (so-called “insetting”)1
Apply a laser-like focus on the acceleration of decarbonisation.
They conclude that,
Continuing to stand behind the fallacy that carbon offsetting approaches will get us out of the climate crisis is now untenable.
I’m concerned about the idea of “insetting”. The link is to an article on the World Economic Forum website. The WEF is a neoliberal elite that flies to Davos once a year. Once there, the rich and powerful pretend to be addressing the climate and other crises. The WEF article is illustrated with a photograph of a monoculture tree plantation in China. The International Platform for Insetting uses the example of an agroforestry project to illustrate insetting: “The carbon sequestered through the trees can be calculated, certified to existing standards and used by the company to claim a net-zero goal or carbon neutral product.” That sounds far too similar to offsetting to my sceptical ear.