NY Times Editorial Highlights Offsets Loophole in ACES Bill

Today the New York Times published an editorial highlighting two major loopholes contained in the climate and energy bill  (ACES) that passed out of the House of Representatives last month. The Times brought to light that existing coal-fired power plants are exempt from performance standards and the difficulty of ensuring the additionality of offsets.

We were heartened to see that the editorial board of the New York Times has urged the Senate to address the risks associated with offsets. International Rivers has been a leading critic of the Clean Development Mechanism, the world's largest international offset market. We have also published an in-depth analysis of the offset provisions in the ACES bill and reported on how these provisions were further weakened as the bill snaked its way through the House (see here and here).

We agree with the NY Times that offsets, which support business-as-usual projects, rather than real emissions reductions, are no friend to the atmosphere. Unlike the NY Times, we don't believe that the quality of offsets can be improved. The only way to prove that an offset represents additional emissions reductions is to know what would have happened to the project if additional funding through the sale of offsets had not been available. Without a crystal ball, this question can never be answered, making it impossible to prove the integrity of offsets.

Supporters of offsets argue that they are an essential cost-containment mechanism, in order to give industries time to invest in cleaner technologies for the future. But the ACES bills allows up to 2 billion offsets per annum, roughly equivalent to 1/3 of US emissions in 2005. This means that industries would actually be able to increase pollution levels for over a decade. Since the number of offsets doesn't decrease over time, offsets provide major cost-containment, but don't really force industries to change their act in a manner that is even remotely necessary to limit the impacts of climate change.

The large number of allowable offsets is coupled with extremely weak emission reduction targets - the ACES bill requires a slight reduction in emissions in 2020 relative to 1990 emissions, nowhere near the 25-40% reductions that the IPCC recommends (more recent scientific results suggest that reductions must be at least 40% by 2020 relative to 1990).

International Rivers is working with other progressive envirionmental organizations to educate Senators on the risks of offsets and to urge them to strengthen the Senate version of the bill by prohibiting the use of offsets. Soon we'll be calling on you to contact your Senator to support our efforts.