Carbon Offsets Daily: Do you think companies should use carbon offsets to mitigate their global warming emissions?
I don’t see anything wrong with a company purchasing carbon offsets in an attempt to mitigate their carbon emissions, but I don’t think that it’s a panacea to climate change situation. If purchasing carbon offsets (and advertising that fact) can increase a given company’s profits, then it should definitely do so. However, I think a more effective way to deal with a company’s carbon emissions is by reducing energy consumption and making its operations more efficient. Finally, I think the best way to mitigate global warming is not through the transfer of carbon credits in a cap-and-trade scheme, but rather by instituting a tax on sources of carbon emissions (such as coal, natural gas, petroleum products, etc.) so that non-carbon-emitting energy sources (such as wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, etc.) become more cost-competitive.
Christopher Monnier
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Christopher said:
“However, I think a more effective way to deal with a company’s carbon emissions is by reducing energy consumption and making its operations more efficient.”
It would take years and enormous capital and human resources for virtually any organization to reach carbon neutrality following this strategy–and all the while the globe continues to warm. The only effective way–in fact, the only way–to take responsibility for the majority of (or 100% of) a company’s current emissions is offset them. If a company believes that global warming is a truly serious problem and would like to take responsibility for its 2008 emissions, the only conceivable strategy is to offset them. Improving efficiency and making changes in practices to reduce the internal footprint must be coupled with a strategy for dealing with the rest of the emissions if it is to be a credible strategy.
I agree that the best approach would be to remain carbon neutral by improving efficiency and offsetting the remaining emissions at the same time. However, even while maintaining carbon neutrality, a firm should try to increase it’s efficiency, so that an even lesser percentage of emissions remain in the need for offsets.
Yes that’s true. Carbon offsetting and energy efficiency go hand in hand. Relying solely on carbon offsets will not address the culture of waste and over consumption that plagues our existence and striving for energy efficiency without using carbon offsets will take a long time to reap benefits and unfortunately time is what we’re running out of.
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