US Companies Favoring Efficiency Over Offsets
Companies are beginning to see the problems inherent in offsets and are instead turning to improving energy efficiency. The latest companies to abandon the over-hyped offset are Yahoo! and Nike.
Last summer, Yahoo! announced that in a reversal of its 2007 announcement of investing in carbon offset projects to become carbon neutral, it would instead focus on "highly-efficient data centers" that would have "a greater long-term direct impact on the environment" and would give them "the best opportunity to play a leadership role in addressing climate change," according to David Filo, the company's co-founder (and "Chief Yahoo").
Earlier this year, Nike, the world's leading maker of athletic footwear, decided to stop buying carbon offsets and concentrate instead on "curbing business travel through increased use of tele- and videoconferencing, boosting energy efficiency initiatives and taking a hard look at the embedded energy in materials and energy consumed in the manufacturing process" (for instance, the energy associated with the production life-cycle of a Nike shoe). While cutting back on carbon offsets has meant that Nike's greenhouse gas footprint from its business travel has increased in the last year, its overall footprint is still lower than 2008 levels.
In the US, where offset purchases are voluntary, government oversight is limited--which leads many to suspect that the pay-to-pollute method has little to no real impact on carbon reductions. Even under regulated carbon offsets trading schemes like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), most carbon offset projects do not lead to real carbon emissions reductions, as our reports have shown. Notes the prominent researcher Michael Wara, "Basically we're paying for...'anyway' credits -- credits that would have happened anyway."
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