No room for offsets in IPCC’s carbon budget

A new report by CLARA explains that the remaining carbon budget gives no room for ANY offsets

Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the final part of its sixth assessment report. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said,

“This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”

The Center for International Environmental Law highlights Guterres’ key messages as follows:

The IPCC Synthesis Report highlights the role of fossil fuels in driving the climate crisis:

“Projected CO₂ emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure without additional abatement would exceed the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C”.

It’s great that the IPCC is talking so directly about fossil fuels. Even better is that this is in the headline statements of the Summary for Policymakers (and not buried deep in the report).

But the word “abatement” could lead to all sorts of problems. The IPCC explains in a footnote that, “Abatement here refers to human interventions that reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are released from fossil fuel infrastructure to the atmosphere.”

As climate activist Dr. Genevieve Guenther notes, “that word ‘abatement’ is so ill-defined that it opens a door that an entire circus of bullshit offsets could mambo right through”. Offsets are just not an option if we are to stand any chance of addressing the climate crisis.

The Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance put out a report just before the Synthesis Report with the headline “No space for ANY offsets in IPCC’s remaining carbon budget”.

The report starts with the simple statement that, “The world cannot offset its way to 1.5°C.”

Carbon budget

The problem is the carbon budget. In order to stand a 50% chance of remaining below 1.5°C global heating the remaining budget is about 500 GtCO₂. Global greenhouse gas emissions are getting close to 40 GtCO₂ per year (and increasing each year). At this rate, the remaining carbon budget will be gone by 2035.

Any ongoing emissions use up the remaining carbon budget. “Offsets don’t change that,” CLARA writes.

“It doesn’t matter if the polluter buys an offset with the best green certification or calls itself ‘high integrity’, or if the credit is a junk Verra offset. If the offset is used to justify ongoing emissions, it makes the global warming problem worse.”

CLARA explains that offset proponents argue that emissions in rich countries can be effectively cancelled out by activities in the Global South. “But those emissions still happened regardless,” CLARA notes. Avoiding or reducing emissions somewhere on the planet does not change the fact that emissions from burning fossil fuels have continued elsewhere.

The IPCC’s Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers states that,

“All global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C . . . involve rapid and deep and, in most cases, immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors this decade.”

The IPCC sees a role for carbon dioxide removal for “some hard-to-abate residual GHG emissions”. But in a previous part of the Sixth Assessment Report, the IPCC states that carbon dioxide removal “cannot serve as a substitute for deep emissions reductions”.

Three reasons why CO₂ removal cannot compensate ongoing emissions

In a 2022, the IPPC wrote that, “Afforestation, reforestation, improved forest management, agroforestry and soil carbon sequestration are currently the only widely practiced CDR methods.” CLARA highlights three reasons why these forms of CO₂ removal cannot compensate for ongoing emissions:

• CO₂ removal methods include afforestation, reforestation, and agroforestry. CO₂ is sequestrated until trees are harvested or die. The climate crisis means that vegetation is vulnerable to fires, droughts, insect attacks, flooding, and so on. Fossil emissions remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. Land-based sequestration is for a much shorter period. “Geological carbon and biological carbon are not and should not be treated as fungible,” CLARA writes.

• Carbon uptake in ecosystems is slow. Trees take many years to grow. Even large-scale tree planting taking place this year would not deliver meaningful sequestration for decades. Too late for the 1.5°C threshold.

• The total amount of CO₂ removals currently possible is completely dwarfed by annual greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Other technologies for CO₂ removal such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) remain unproven. They are probably unfeasible at scale, because of the demands on land (BECCS), water (DACCS and BECCS), and energy (DACCS). There are “significant human rights concerns associated with these demands,” CLARA writes.

“Deep, rapid reductions that get emissions close to zero are needed, and needed now, so that natural removals will be able to make a contribution in the second half of the century. At present, and for the foreseeable future (unless one believes in imaginary carbon unicorns), there is only enough sequestration capacity to counterbalance a relatively small amount of residual fossil fuel emissions.”

To address the climate crisis, we need urgent reductions in emissions from burning fossil fuels. Offsets have no role to play whatsoever. Teresa Anderson, Climate Justice Lead, ActionAid International, says,

“With the finger of blame firmly pointed at the fossil fuel industry, governments need to stop delaying and start acting. For too many years, the elusive promises of technofixes or carbon offsets have allowed the biggest polluters to string us all along. Enough is enough. There is only a narrow window of opportunity to limit warming to 1.5°C, avoid runaway climate breakdown, and protect billions of people. But we can only do this if governments are willing to treat this report as a clear mandate for courageous action.” 

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