This story has been updated to include reaction to the new SBTi policy and further information on the advocacy leading up to the decision.
Companies will be allowed to buy carbon offsets to cover their downstream emissions under new rules adopted this week by the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), the international body that aims to drive “ambitious corporate climate action” by setting voluntary targets for emission reduction plans.
The announcement Tuesday produced scorching criticism from groups that follow carbon credits and international carbon footprints, and from within SBTi itself. “Dozens of SBTi staff have called for the resignation of the organization’s chief executive and its board members, describing the decision as ‘deeply problematic’,” the Financial Times reports. And Stephan Singer, senior science advisor at Climate Action Network International, resigned from his post on an SBTi technical advisory committee.
Carbon credits are “scientifically, socially, and from a climate perspective a hoax” and could provide a “survival floor for fossil fuel companies’ super-large Scope 3″ emissions, Singer wrote.
In a statement on its website, SBTi says it will allow “environmental attribute certificates”, or carbon offsets, to help companies reduce their Scope 3 emissions under its flagship Corporate Net-Zero Standard. “While recognizing that there is an ongoing healthy debate on the subject matter,” the organization writes, “SBTi recognizes that, when properly supported by policies, standards and procedures based on scientific evidence, the use of environmental attribute certificates for abatement purposes on Scope 3 emissions could function as an additional tool to tackle climate change.”
The perpetual controversy around carbon offsets reached a peak last year when an investigation of the credits offered by Washington, DC-based Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard in the offsets market, concluded that nearly 95% of them were essentially worthless. Wider analysis in the course of the year found alarming evidence of the carbon credit market’s susceptibility to manipulation, deception, and profiteering.
Yet SBTi’s announcement states that the global body “will not embark in validating carbon credits quality. Other entities are better positioned to deal with this activity.” Instead, “SBTi will enable all validating entities to have clear access and complete understanding of the demand side guardrails and rules established by SBTi for this purpose.”
On Wednesday, Carbon Market Watch issued a strong condemnation of the new framework.
“This decision defies both good governance and science. If it is not reversed, it will strip the SBTi of its ‘science-based’ nature and will mark a step back for voluntary climate initiatives globally,” said CMW Executive Director Sabine Frank. “By granting excessive flexibility to companies, SBTi will lose its raison d’être: promoting robust and effective corporate climate action.”
A day later, the new framework was “under fire” from SBTi staff over a stark policy change that was originally “backed by its key financial supporter, the Bezos Earth Fund,” the Financial Times reports. “A big concern among staff members is that these polluters and fossil fuel financiers could be given a green light to buy offsets rather than focus on cutting their own emissions.”
“This would not incentivise companies to reduce their emissions,” said one senior staffer who endorsed a letter opposing the new policy. “It would be a perverse incentive to just buy cheaper carbon credits.”
“These indirect, value chain emissions usually make up the lion’s share of a company’s carbon footprint,” CMW said of Scope 3 emissions. But now, “the Science Based Targets initiative appears to have buckled to pressure from carbon market players and corporate interests to allow companies to meet scope 3 targets with carbon credits, raising the risk that corporations can appear to be improving their climate performance on paper while actually spewing out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
The Times says the use of offsets received support from heavy hitters like Sir Chris Hohn’s Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative, and the We Mean Business Coalition, whose CEO Maria Mendiluce spoke in favour of offsets as an SBTi trustee.
