CEO of Biggest Carbon Credit Certifier To Resign After Claims Offsets Worthless (theguardian.com) 80
The head of the world's leading carbon credit certifier has announced he will step down as CEO next month. From a report: It comes amid concerns that Verra, a Washington-based nonprofit, approved tens of millions of worthless offsets that are used by major companies for climate and biodiversity commitments, according to a joint Guardian investigation earlier this year. In a statement on LinkedIn on Monday, Verra's CEO, David Antonioli, said he would leave his role after 15 years leading the organisation that dominates the $2bn voluntary carbon market, which has certified more than 1bn credits through its verified carbon standard (VCS).
Antonioli thanked current and former staff, and said he was immensely proud of what Verra had accomplished through the environmental standards it operates. He did not give a reason for his departure and said he would be taking a break once he left the role. Judith Simon, Verra's recently appointed president, will serve as interim CEO following Antonioli's departure on 16 June. "The trust you placed in Verra and myself in my role as CEO has meant a lot, and I leave knowing we have made tremendous strides together in addressing some of the world's most vexing environmental and social problems. Working with you on these important issues has been a great highlight of my career," he said.
Antonioli thanked current and former staff, and said he was immensely proud of what Verra had accomplished through the environmental standards it operates. He did not give a reason for his departure and said he would be taking a break once he left the role. Judith Simon, Verra's recently appointed president, will serve as interim CEO following Antonioli's departure on 16 June. "The trust you placed in Verra and myself in my role as CEO has meant a lot, and I leave knowing we have made tremendous strides together in addressing some of the world's most vexing environmental and social problems. Working with you on these important issues has been a great highlight of my career," he said.
Free Carbon Offsets (Score:5, Funny)
I've been a customer of Free Carbon Offsets for years. https://www.freecarbonoffsets.... [freecarbonoffsets.com]
Re: (Score:2)
That's great, if the offsets are real. How do you know their offsets have any more value than the ones incorrectly certified by Verra?
Re:Free Carbon Offsets (Score:5, Insightful)
How does this "carbon offset" purchase thing actually work and how does it actually benefit "climate change"?
I see companies pay money.....and get credits.
What does this money do to fix the climate problems exactly?
Let's say Exxon pays $1B.
And they get to go on about their business with no one complaining.
How does that $1B help fix the pollution exactly?
Re:Free Carbon Offsets (Score:5, Informative)
How does that $1B help fix the pollution exactly?
This guy gets it
Re:Free Carbon Offsets (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an Indulgence, in the catholic sense: you pay money to be absolved of your sins. The reality behind it is irrelevant.
Carbon offset credits are a green-washing scam which appeared around the same time that "net zero" became a thing. it basically is the financiarization of an accounting trick.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is how the billions went to fight global change - they used it to purchase acres of the Amazon rainforest that were threatened by development.
However, the Guardian investigators came along and proved that, "ha ha! Those specific acres probably wouldn't have been developed quite yet anyways!!" And the message came across as an allegation of fraud. That's not what happened, and there is every reason
A responsible government (Score:3)
The concept of "pay me a lot or I will trash the planet" makes me sick to my stomach. Capitalism gone mad.
Carbon offsets, if anything, should only be for positive carbon sequestration such as new afforestation, switching to soil-retaining agriculture, or positive development/deployment, not already funded, of zero-emission energy systems.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
should have just declared those parts of the Amazon off limits to deforestation anyway.
Hah, a responsible and non corrupt right-wing government in South America?
How long should I hold my breath?
Re: (Score:2)
Err...those are all pretty leftist down south there....
Re: (Score:2)
that is not fighting climate change, that's paying to partially escape the consequences of our current actions. (past actions being already done, and not being remedied)
It allow the business as usual to go on, while not reducing emissions.
I maintain Net zero is a scam accounting trick, and carbon offset credits a way of perpetuating that scam. Yes, the fact that the land is blocked against development* is good, but it is being blocked against current emissions which should not be generated in the first plac
Re: (Score:2)
Indulgence is just a fancy name for a bribe or payment to obtain some unontainable item-service-blessing while making you feel good about it.
A hooker might be cheeper and make you feel just as good.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If they're paying a billion freaking dollars for cleanup and carbon removal efforts, they ARE good guys, or at least neutral guys!
Re: (Score:3)
So, is there some sort of independent verification source that goes out and verifies and document what $$'s go to what mitigation efforts and sources?
Is all the money accounted for in an easily verifiable way?
If not, this just sounds like movements of money to different companies without any real mitigation being done...?
Re: (Score:2)
Not if they're still doing $10B in damage, and only paying $1B.
Also, in this case, it sounds like the companies using this certifier were taken as chumps.
IE I pay somebody to recycle my plastic, only to find out that they "recycled" it straight into the local dump. Or worse, shipped it to Africa or such, burning incredibly dirty bunker oil, to be dumped into the ocean around there.
That said, carbon capture is a very complicated affair, and you can get everything from straight up sequestration to straight u
Re: (Score:2)
If they're paying a billion freaking dollars for cleanup and carbon removal efforts, they ARE good guys, or at least neutral guys!
They're paying a billion dollars for a weaver to be allowed continue doing what they're doing (i.e., polluting).
My grandparents own a chunk of land in the countryside with some trees on it. It's been sitting like that for decades, and will continue to do so. But, if I say that I will chop them down unless Exxon pays me $1B, they can continue polluting and I get tons of money for literally not doing anything.
Re: (Score:2)
If they're paying a billion freaking dollars for cleanup and carbon removal efforts, they ARE good guys, or at least neutral guys!
They're paying a billion dollars for a weaver to be allowed continue doing what they're doing (i.e., polluting).
My grandparents own a chunk of land in the countryside with some trees on it. It's been sitting like that for decades, and will continue to do so. But, if I say that I will chop them down unless Exxon pays me $1B, they can continue polluting and I get tons of money for literally not doing anything.
This is an explanation I can get behind. Chiefly because it opens the door for the world to verbally class-up the billions of dollars in extortion/aid payments to places like South Korea, Iran, and Pakistan, by calling them something more feel-good like WMD Offset Credits! How empathetic and humanitarian for the government of SK to allow the USA to generously purchase WMD Offset Credits from the Kim family.
(...until roughly 2029 when WaPo will publish a searing exposé on so called glowing-neon-greenwas
Re: (Score:2)
$1 billion wouldn’t even make a dent in Exxon’s bottom line.
Re: (Score:2)
That is the really sad part about these stupid cap-and-trade, credits systems etc.
A given company like XOM could invest a billion dollars in actually 'greening up their own business' trying technologies to improve efficiencies, developing capture and storage solutions, etc and do the planet a whole lot a good.
However if they do and it does not work, or does produce the results as measured by whatever climate regulator's favored account scheme is - they'd get no reward no tax credit, etc for their effort.
How
Re:Free Carbon Offsets (Score:5, Insightful)
How does that $1B help fix the pollution exactly?
In short, it doesn't. The concept of carbon credits was founded on the principal that, so long as someone, somewhere, wasn't doing $the_bad_thing, it's perfectly fine if other someones, sowhere, went ahead and did $the_bad_thing as much as they wanted, but that they paid for the privilege. The idea was that if we made it seem expensive to pour carbon into the atmosphere, maybe businesses would curtail pouring carbon into the atmosphere. At least, that's how it was sold. What actually happened was the big oil companies, auto-producers, and other big sponsors of the $the_bad_thing pay a pittance as a nominal "fee" toward carbon offsets, usually going to some company that supposedly prevents development in forested or other backwater type country, most of which was never, ever going to be developed anyway, and then they just keep right on keeping on doing that there $the_bad_thing as much as they want, so long as they pay that little fee to the company that owns the undevelopable land.
It's a nice way to make a middle-man profit on nothing, and gives greenies a boner over nothing, and does exactly zero to actually help slow pollution.
Re: (Score:2)
How does that $1B help fix the pollution exactly?
The idea was that if we made it seem expensive to pour carbon into the atmosphere, maybe businesses would curtail pouring carbon into the atmosphere.
The problem is that the penalty for the bad action isn't sufficiently significant to alter behavior. Sort of like when a $1 billion dollar fine is imposed once even though the company earns $10 billion/year on the bad activity. That fine is just a cost of doing business and doesn't alter behavior.
However, there are some instances where the shift in money makes a difference. For example, Tesla gets money from GM and Ford through credits. That penalty doesn't affect GM and Ford behavior, but it does help
Re: (Score:2)
However, there are some instances where the shift in money makes a difference. For example, Tesla gets money from GM and Ford through credits. That penalty doesn't affect GM and Ford behavior, but it does help out Tesla somewhat, especially in the beginning before Tesla was profitable. In that sense of using the money to bolster the economic viability of "good" actors, the credit scheme makes sense.
The Tesla situation seems very much the exception, rather than the rule. If they money usually went into greener alternatives of the same type of tech, that'd be a hell of a lot better place than we are now. As it is? Lots of incentive for bad actors to claim they own some large forest somewhere just to be paid to do nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel you might be confusing emission allowances with offset credits.
Allowances financialize the maximum amount you're allowed to emit, based on the total amount of allowances available. whereas offset credits give you a good feeling that your waste will be taken care of somewhere else. Somewhat like the recycling fee.
There appears to be a way to use offset credits to increase the total amount you're allowed to emit through allowances, but the mechanism gets a bit more complex.
note: coming from the EU, don
Re: (Score:2)
The concept of carbon credits was founded on the principal that, so long as someone, somewhere, wasn't doing $the_bad_thing
Actually it wasn't. The concept itself was sound and founded on the principle that someone somewhere was doing *THE OPPOSITE* of $the_bad_thing. The issue is that this entire process was corrupted to become exactly as you described.
If you cut a tree down and burn it and pay me to plant a tree, that's a carbon credit as the concept was envisaged.
If you cut a tree down and burn it and pay me to simply not do anything to a tree that wasn't going to have anything done in the first place, well that's the corrupt
Re: (Score:2)
Carbon credits are a cryptocurrency level scam.
If I pollute the shit out of location A but buy a bunch of carbon credits from a company in location B location A is still polluted as shit.
barking at the wrong tree (Score:2)
Carbon credits are meant to tackle the GLOBAL problem of excess CO2 - so speaking of locations makes no sense.
Re: (Score:2)
"How does that $1B help fix the pollution exactly?"
The way it's supposed to work is that the people getting the $1B don't emit $1B worth of carbon that they otherwise would have.
The problem is that the the people getting the $1B were not in fact going to emit any of the carbon they promised not to emit anyways, so nothing is accomplished, other than giving the right to continue emitting CO2 to the polluter.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
So, an example from my own personal experience:
I work with a nonprofit that operates at a remote wilderness site. We operate off a small run-of-the-river hydroelectric generating system that works well for us. Our neighbours in the valley, who are there long term to remediate an old mine site, burn roughly 750,000L of diesel a year to power their operations. Given that once of our core competencies is running a small hydro-electric power system, and one of our core values is reducing the carbon footprint in
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about this
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Free Carbon Offsets (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a big supporter of their methods:
Q:
What exactly will you do for my carbon offsets?
A:
There are several steps we will take to do our part to help the environment, based on your level of participation:
1-100 offsets: We will try our hardest to turn off the water for an extra ten seconds while we brush our teeth.
101-1000 offsets: We will think about possibly using one fewer square of toilet paper every time we use the rest room. So you don't have to!
1001-10000 offsets: At this level, we will think about not going out to lunch for one day. Gas savings, plus savings on one less burger made that day!
10000+ offsets: Premium offsets. We will consider not taking a shower for a whole week!
Re: (Score:2)
I am sure the real offsets come with much more substantial actions. Though not as much as one might hope for.
Re: (Score:2)
"I am sure the real offsets come with much more substantial actions."
Your faith is truly touching.
Another traitor to the human race (Score:5, Insightful)
What he did was make it possible for the pollution to go on a lot longer. Does not get much more evil than that.
Re: (Score:3)
What he did was make it possible for the pollution to go on a lot longer. Does not get much more evil than that.
And "immensely proud" -- of the fraud he helped perpetuate:
Antonioli thanked current and former staff, and said he was immensely proud of what Verra had accomplished through the environmental standards it operates.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. What a stellar human being.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, his fraud benefited many people, like... yacht manufacturers, champagne producers, cocaine smugglers... the list goes on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The only real exchange, ie. the EU one, doesn't accept them.
Aviation is desperate to maintain the status quo, so they threw Verra a bone for PR. The only exchanges which accept them are for third world countries. Verra likely bribed people to get that done.
Re: (Score:2)
The EU are big time cheaters though when it comes to accounting. Buy American grown biomass, ship it to the EU, burn it there, attribute the emitted carbon to the US...
Such a joke. legitimate carbon foot print accounting would account for it where it enters the atmosphere. Exxon does not pump all that oil up out of the ground because they just enjoy doing it. They do it because someone wants to burn it and will pay them for it. Its THAT persons responsibility for not choosing a non-emitting energy source
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
EU treaties start leading a life of their own when they get on the books, it's not so easy to back out.
Take a lot what the nitrogen emission treaties are doing to the Dutch and Belgium economy.
B.S. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I mean... what you're describing is how they're supposed to work. And it could make sense - I'm dumping X tons of carbon, but I'm also paying this other company to capture the same amount.
But in reality, the "other company" isn't doing something like that - instead they're just taking credit for very tenuous "well... we chose not to pollute even more", or just flat out making stuff up.
The idea isn't wholly garbage... but companies like the one in the OP have built from that idea a system that is actively h
It was always kinda BS (Score:1)
Re:It was always kinda BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Worse, many offsets are sold for activities that were already happening, with or without offsets.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: It was always kinda BS (Score:2)
My dad, who still farms, saw a neighbor that has been no-till farming for years plow up his whole farm last year. When he saw the guy next he asked him what the deal was, thinking maybe he had weed issues or something. The other farmer told him "they're telling us that in a few years we're going to get environmental payments for going no-till, but only if we aren't already. So we're going back to tilling ahead of the program."
Always beware the law of unintended consequnces.
Carbon Offsets have always been a scam (Score:5, Informative)
Carbon offsets have always been a scam. I was taking a Portuguese class once and met a guy who was deeply involved in it, unapologetically I might add.
Here is how he said it works. A holding company looks in developing countries for undeveloped land that is difficult or impossible to develop, mostly belonging to governments. It then leases this land from government "to prevent it being developed" and then fabricates a carbon credit for the vegetative CO2 absorption capacity of that land.
No new CO2 sinking capability is created, and nothing is done to help the climate in this process. There is simply a promise not to develop land that can't be developed anyway.
The gentleman in my class specialized in leasing indigenous land from the Brazilian government, which is why he was learning Portuguese.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with carbon offsets is that they essentially rely on a counterfactual - what would have been done absent the implementation of whatever mechanism is used by the offset.
Attribution of carbon emissions to a particular end use is itself more art than science - also involving a lot of assumptions and counterfactuals.
Put these two together and you have in carbon offset a product where it's almost impossible to know if it is actually working - i.e. did any net change in carbon emissions occur at all -
Re: (Score:3)
They're the secular version of medieval Papal indulgences.
They do EXACTLY what they were designed to do: offer those who have $$ a pastiche of forgiveness for their 'climate sins' so they can continue to do whatever they were doing before.
He can leave after stealing money (Score:2)
ESG Scores (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Who exactly gives out or assigns these "ESG scores"?
Is there an ESG clearing house out there somewhere?
Tell the truth and get fired... (Score:2)
I've always thought offsets were bogus (Score:3)
Typically they seem to be used by individuals and companies to claim they're being responsible while not impacting their own behavior at all - "Sure I'm jetting to Europe for the second time this month, but I bought some offsets from an indigenous African group so it's okay".
We need carrots to go with the sticks. (Score:2)
Punishing people for fossil fuel use isn't helpful if there's no alternatives being offered. People need to also be lead into something better. I'll hear people bring up batteries as an alternative to a tank of some fossil fuel but that's not "better".
The first problem with batteries replacing fossil fuels is that batteries are not an energy source, while fossil fuels are. With every BEV comes an additional load on the electricity supply. The need for new power plants and wires may not be there because
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you think that despite all the problems airplane manufacturers are looking at hydrogen? It's an expensive solution, requiring massive infrastructure and design change ... yet still they persist. They do this because they know that arable land biofuel won't scale, non arable land biofuel is ridiculously expensive and synthfuel will likely be even more expensive to use than hydrogen.
That carrot you want is solid gold. Only affordable to the rich and people taking an old timer out on the road once a yea
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you think that despite all the problems airplane manufacturers are looking at hydrogen?
Because it is good public relations. Not because it is a good idea. Talking about hydrogen airplanes gets politicians to pay for new engine development using taxpayer funds, and makes travelers feel better about their carbon footprint if the aircraft manufacturer and/or airline talks about plans for reducing CO2 emissions.
Hydrogen is not a practical fuel for aircraft. This has been proven. If hydrogen gets cheap and abundant enough for aircraft fuel then we are one small step from synthesizing kerosene
Re: (Score:2)
Even making a demonstrator is 100s of millions of dollars, if they had any faith in synth fuel being competitive they would just join up the German car industry.
Unlike the car industry they can use liquid hydrogen though. Capturing carbon dioxide and multiple synthesis steps take money and the liquid hydrogen supply chain is there any way, easier to skip the middle man and save a ton of money.
Re: (Score:2)
Even making a demonstrator is 100s of millions of dollars,
So? If the demonstrator works then that is potentially trillions of dollars in return. That's not a bad bet to make, especially when the investment buys some good PR.
With governments all over the world looking for alternatives to fossil fuels there must be all kinds of money floating around to invest in the technology. I recall that just in the US Department of Defense there's a Navy project on synthesized fuels, an Air Force project on testing alternative fuels, and yet another funded by the Army. Then
Re: (Score:2)
Rockets have LOX. Insulation weighs very little, putting say perlite and vacuum between two walls doesn't take that much material, the outer wall is a structural part of the airplane so only the inner wall adds any real weight and it's not much. "High pressure" is a couple Bar at most.
Re: (Score:2)
500 miles at roughly 70 miles per hour average is a 7 hour driving shift. I don't know about you, but a 45 minute rest (for recharging of vehicle and driver) would be very welcome after 7 straight hours of highway driving.
How is that not practical again?
Changing the power sources for powering the grid, to de-carbonize the power grid, is a feasible problem, since you can get simplicity (not that many generation nodes to replace) and
Re: (Score:2)
Tesla Semi truck has demonstrated 500 miles up and down hills with full load.
I recall seeing an analysis of this claim of a "full load". They likely filled the truck up to the maximum allowed weight for the road but because of the weight of batteries the amount of actual cargo on the truck was half that of a diesel truck.
500 miles at roughly 70 miles per hour average is a 7 hour driving shift. I don't know about you, but a 45 minute rest (for recharging of vehicle and driver) would be very welcome after 7 straight hours of highway driving.
I've talked with long haul truckers before and they want options to pull over as needed. They get paid for stops to refill but not to clean the windscreen. If the windscreen is dirty then they can pull over at the next truck stop, and top off the tank while they
Re: (Score:2)
--
We solved global warming, now stop scaring everyone's kids to death over it.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Human-cause greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is 418 parts-per-million (ppm) versus pre-industrial levels averaging 280 ppm. Other GHGs are roughly double their pre-industrial levels.
And global temperature is rising from about 1.2 degrees C above pre-industrial average temperatures and is projected to be hitting 1.5 deg
Scammers gonna scam (Score:2)
Annnndd.... (Score:2)
Nobody was surprised.
Grifters on the Left, Grifters on the Right (Score:2)
Basically the general public was figuring it out? (Score:2)
I mean it sounds like people just started paying attention to what it is and he's like uh oh and bailed out to try to and stay as far away from it as possible for shtf?
what could possibly go wrong (Score:3)
voluntary
self regulated
self verified
high profit for printing worthless certificates
It's time to get out the fucking big stick and wack a few fat cats
Scam Perhaps? (Score:3)
scam (Score:2)
All of these offsets are just a shell game, mainly set up for the purpose of funneling money to the "right" people.