Hi. I’m Libby Blanchard. I’m a postdoctoral researcher at the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy, at the University of Utah.

When a company or an individual pollutes greenhouse gasses, they can buy carbon credits. Each carbon credit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide reduced or removed from the atmosphere. Carbon credits are often generated from forest conservation initiatives or tree planting projects.

Currently, many companies claim that these credits “offset” “reduce” or “net out” their own carbon dioxide emissions. Much research suggests that carbon credits greatly over-represent their climate benefit, or are not real, or both.

Further, there is growing recognition that nature-based credits—which represent carbon only temporarily stored in the biosphere—are incommensurable, and therefore should not be used to offset or “cancel out” fossil fuel CO₂  emissions permanently added to the active carbon cycle.

This, in turn, has led to legal and reputational risks for the buyers of carbon credits. Lawsuits have been filed against Delta, KLM, and others alleging that their “net zero” claims are unsupported. In Europe, the European Parliament recently approved a ban on conventional offsetting claims for goods and services.

So, what to do?

The “Contributions Approach” is an idea where companies and others can buy carbon credits, or contribute to forest conservation and other nature conservation or restoration projects, without claiming that any resulting credits offset their own emissions.

In this paper, we propose that the Contributions Approach be guided by 3 principles:

One: Contributions should not take the place of actions to reduce direct emissions, which must come first.

Two: Contributions Approaches should use the best science to quantify any climate benefit of a project or initiative.

And three: When contributions benefits are quantified, independent scientists and other experts should develop and audit the quantification methods.

The Contributions Approach aims to keep funding flowing for important conservation efforts, while avoiding the scientific, legal, reputational, and moral problems associated with using carbon credits as offsets.

It also provides an opportunity to experiment with better ways of measuring the impacts of conservation initiatives beyond just carbon storage.

Video below is based on the study, “Funding forests’ climate potential without carbon offsets” that published in the journal One Earth on July 19, 2024. Hear more from Blanchard on the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy’s podcast, Talking Climate.

• Ross Chambless Community Engagement Manager, Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy
  (801) 646-6067 ross.chambless@utah.edu