Carbon credits that protect forests use flawed calculations: Study June 14, 2024

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By AFP - Agence France Presse

Carbon credits that protect forests use flawed calculations: Study

A new study published on Tuesday has renewed concerns about the efficiency of carbon credits, which are bought by polluting industries such as airlines to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

The study focused on a controversial type of carbon credit, which is based on protecting forests against any future deforestation.

Under this scheme, a company buys a credit for protecting a forest so that one ton of carbon is prevented from being emitted into the atmosphere.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, analyzed how these credits are measured.

It found that the baseline for the calculations - one credit for one ton of carbon dioxide saved - lacked detail and precision, and the parameters were too flexible.

As a result, this led to an “excess of credits” benefiting Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) projects.

These projects have generated 436 million carbon credits, around a fifth of the two billion credits issued worldwide since the early 2000s.

Two of the study's authors, Thales West and Barbara Haya, have been involved in other recent studies that have tarnished the credibility of carbon credits, especially those generated by Verra, a US organization that has certified around two-thirds of existing credits.

The researchers went further in the most recent study, claiming that four of Verra's methodologies use criteria that are too vague to estimate the deforestation that would have occurred without the implementation of a protection project financed by carbon credits.

This data is key to calculating the amount of CO2 not released into the atmosphere due to the project.

According to the study, the methodologies are based on “simplistic forecasts” that rely on “historical trends or averages of deforestation observed over a 10-year period, disregarding changes in political or economic contexts that are known to influence deforestation” during the course of a project.

Instead, the researchers recommended that the protected zone be compared with a similar area that was not financed to determine whether the project prevented deforestation.

Faced with criticism, Verra announced in recent months that it would replace its four methods with a new one, which has so far been applied to five projects under development, without generating credits at this stage.

Meanwhile, more than half of the credits generated by the old methodologies have already been used by companies to sell “carbon neutral” flights, shampoo, and coffee.

The remainder is still circulating on the market and can be used, although the benefits are greatly exaggerated.

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), a private group set up in 2021 after several scandals to assess certifiers' certification methodologies, is currently studying Verra's new protocol to decide whether to grant it as a quality carbon credit.

Verra has asked to exclude its previous methods in the evaluation, an ICVCM spokesperson told AFP.

The decision of the ICVCM committee, made up of experts, and market stakeholders and funded mainly by foundations, is expected in the coming months.

But one of the authors of Tuesday's study, Haya, said that the new method remains based on a flawed approach.

“The improvements will probably only reduce the amount of excessive credit, while still leaving significant room for excessive credit,” she told AFP.

“The methodologies should be treated as guilty until proven innocent,” she said, adding that companies should stop using carbon credits and consider financing forest protection projects as a “contribution” to mitigating global warming, not as compensation for their emissions.

By Mathilde DUMAZET

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