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Airlines want to offset part of their emissions with CO2 credits from climate projects in developing countries.
Photo: Anucha Sirivisansuwan / Getty Images
Even when walking through the supermarket, they catch your eye: the green stickers with the »CO2-neutral« seal.
There are now so many of them that the world should almost be saved.
Whether coffee, toothbrushes or poultry - all climate savers, one might think.
Of course that's not true - with any product.
The coffee is brought from Central America to Germany by ship, the meat is produced in CO2-intensive factory farming and the production of plastic toothbrushes also has a climate footprint.
The climate-neutral seal is a clever pick into the marketing box: The companies donate to climate protection projects in developing countries - allegedly in the amount that they emit CO₂ for their product.
In return, they receive CO2 credits.
The donation to eco-projects becomes a »climate neutral« product.
But there are several catches: At what price did the companies acquire their certificates?
Were you there to see the climate benefits of the projects?
Or do you only know the colorful pictures of the project operators?
Who checks whether CO₂ is actually being saved?
The 200 or so countries of the World Climate Agreement are currently asking themselves these questions: The UN wants to allow compensation under the umbrella of the Paris Agreement in the future.
Soon, not only companies but also states could improve their climate targets with the credits - or earn money from them when they sell them.
The UN climate commissioner and former head of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has now set up a "task force" together with companies from the financial sector to give new impetus to global carbon trading.
His goal: to expand today's 300 million dollar market to up to 100 billion.
In just ten years, the trade in greenhouse gas credits could increase to a volume of 50 billion dollars per year, estimates the management consultancy McKinsey in a recent report.
With a few euros you can "wash yourself green"
The reason: A total of 127 countries have already announced that they will no longer emit greenhouse gases by the middle of the century, including major emitters such as the USA, China and the EU.
They too want to attach the sticker "climate neutral" to their lapels, as do corporations, companies or airlines.
They all promise to reduce their emissions to zero in the next 30 to 40 years.
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But it is already foreseeable that many countries and their CO2-intensive industries will not achieve the green zero.
That's why they have to buy CO2 certificates.
It works just like the seal in the supermarket: somewhere a diesel generator is replaced by solar panels, a forest is protected instead of cleared or a village is equipped with biogas systems - and this saves CO₂.
This is then offset and can be sold as a credit.
A country like the USA with very high emissions could then buy these credits from Brazil, for example, which leaves forest in the Amazon for them.
Under the umbrella of the Paris World Climate Agreement, this intergovernmental compensation should become possible - only on the rules the states could not agree at the last UN climate conference in Madrid in 2019.
That is why the UN climate commissioner wants to at least expand the so-called voluntary CO2 market (see box).
This unregulated and purely private-sector market emerged outside the UN - for example for the CO2-neutral seal on supermarket products.
And: The more companies buy the credits voluntarily, the better for the net zero targets of the states, so the idea.
But the CO2 trade has enormous weaknesses - the voluntary market as well as the previous trade under UN supervision, which is now to be replaced by the world climate agreement.
The old CO2 credits from the UN are currently only worth a few cents.
A few euros are enough to become climate neutral.
This is not an incentive to save greenhouse gases.
There are also a number of dubious projects that companies have used to create a second source of income.
In the past, projects were often not "additional", so the CO2 savings would have taken place anyway.
The Öko-Institut calculated that in 85 percent of the projects it is unlikely that additional emissions were saved.
Whether Carney's proposal creates more trust is doubtful - especially if you look at the list of members: Carney's "Task Force" is a financial industry initiative chaired by Bill Winters, managing director of Standard Chartered.
It doesn't have a particularly good reputation since it was fined more than $ 1 billion for money laundering in 2019.
There are also CEOs like EasyJet and Nestlé, who are otherwise little known for their ecological commitment.
The management consultancy McKinsey is also advising the initiative.
Listed climate rescue
Lambert Schneider has been observing CO2 trading for more than 15 years and is skeptical: "I doubt whether trading in certificates for voluntary compensation will even be accepted by the market." When trading on the stock exchange, buyers would not know which project they were purchasing certificates from but only that there are certificates that meet the minimum requirements.
"It is therefore really to be feared that this initiative will only make absolute minimum demands on the quality of climate certificates."
Other experts who are currently negotiating at the UN level also see it this way: "This market determines its own goals, standards and rules," says environmental lawyer Christina Voigt.
She is a member of the Norwegian negotiating team and teaches at the University of Oslo.
"There are no objective experts or monitoring by an independent body in the existing voluntary CO2 trade." Many companies are more interested in a green bill than being.
Strict rules therefore urgently need to be introduced - at national or UN level.
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Cow dung production for biogas plants in India: ecological alternatives to wood can stop deforestation in poor countries.
Photo: DIPTENDU DUTTA / AFP
Environmentalists also criticize the UN climate commissioner's approach in an open letter.
Carney's »task force« wants rules that are as lax as possible - despite the numerous corruption and greenwashing cases.
"An expansion of the voluntary market is unnecessary," write the authors.
Offsetting, as the purchase of CO2 credits is also called, prevents sustainable emission reductions and the restructuring of societies.
In addition, forest projects are also allowed that were rightly excluded under the Kyoto Protocol - the predecessor of the world climate agreement, according to the activists.
In such projects, it is not certain whether the afforested forest will continue to exist in the future or will be cut down or burned as soon as the credits are sold.
And human rights violations are also the order of the day in such projects, "including violence, torture and murder," write the environmentalists.
The problem with double counting
"Offsetting only makes sense if all other CO2-saving options have been exhausted," says lawyer Christina Voigt.
"Most of the time, however, expensive climate protection in industrialized countries is replaced by cheap credits from the south, the integrity of which nobody can really assess."
But not only companies, but also states are trying to enrich themselves at the expense of the climate.
Developing and emerging countries in particular are currently trying to enforce “double counting” in the UN negotiations: The climate projects in their country want to be credited even though they have already sold the credits.
For example, Brazil wants to be paid for not logging as well as reforestation with CO2 rights.
At the same time, however, the country wants to write the emissions saved in this way into its own carbon footprint.
That is why it is so important that strict rules for CO2 credits are created at the next UN climate conference: "If all participants and private companies adhere to international, uniform regulations, we are already a big step further," says lawyer Voigt.
Some countries are now already relying on bilateral agreements and are no longer waiting for a UN decision: Switzerland has already concluded two agreements with Peru and Ghana for trading in CO2 credits.
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