5.9.1 The Role of Carbon Offsets

Internal GHG emissions reductions must be the first priority of colleges and universities committed to reducing their carbon footprint. However, despite our best efforts, in the short to mid-term, the majority of colleges and universities will be only partially successful in eliminating their GHG emissions. Remaining GHG emissions can be offset by purchasing financial instruments that help pay for projects which reduce GHG emissions elsewhere, i.e. not on our campuses, or by using our own resources to create these kinds of projects in the wider community. In addition to taking us those last steps in carbon reduction, carbon offsets may be used to meet interim CAP emissions reduction targets when good faith internal reduction efforts fall short. It’s a simple concept. But the devil’s in the details.

5.9.2 Projects that Can Create Carbon Offsets

Carbon offsets can be produced in a number of ways. For example, energy conservation and efficiency, fuel switching, renewable energy, and carbon capture and storage projects can prevent or avoid the release of GHG emissions into the atmosphere – and hence may produce legitimate carbon offsets.

Reforestation projects can remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in biomass – at least temporarily -- and hence may count as valid carbon offsets.

Capturing the methane produced at landfills and flaring it (burning it in the atmosphere to convert it to less harmful carbon dioxide) can decrease the GHG emissions impact of landfills -- and hence may produce valid carbon offsets. On a mass basis, methane is a much more powerful GHG than carbon dioxide; that’s why it is advantageous from a climate protection point of view to flare methane even though the end result is an atmospheric release of carbon dioxide. It is even better – and more productive in terms of carbon offsetting ¬– to burn the landfill-harvested methane in a boiler or turbine that generates electricity and useful heat, thus displacing the fossil fuels which would have otherwise been burned for those purposes. Such a combination strategy would increase the offset value.

The destruction of industrial refrigerants (CFCs and HCFCs, for example) and other climate-harming gases is also beneficial from a climate protection perspective – and thus another means of producing “carbon” offsets. In all cases, however, certain conditions must be met before these kinds of projects can be regarded as producing legitimate carbon offsets

5.9.3 Defining High Quality Carbon Offsets

At present, the carbon offset market is in its infancy and buying offsets might seem a little like buying “a pig in a poke.” If that phrase is unfamiliar, it means (as per the Wikipedia): “to make a risky purchase without inspecting the item beforehand.” Another way of saying it would be “caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware). There is a great deal of skepticism about carbon offsets. For various reasons carbon offsets have been perceived as:

• Producing little or no real GHG emissions reduction benefit
• A way of excusing bad behavior or buying one’s way out
• An example of green-washing

But with the right guarantees and third party certification carbon offsets can produce real emissions reductions, and in that case those who are responsible for creating or financing these reductions have the right to take credit for them.

The ACUPCC Voluntary Carbon Offset Protocol provides guidance for purchasing valid, high quality offsets. According to the Protocol, these offsets must be:

• Real
• Additional
• Transparent
• Measurable
• Permanent
• Verifiable
• Synchronous
• Account for leakage
• Registered
• Not double counted
• Retired

All of these attributes have technical meanings which are explained in the Protocol.
While all of them are important, the concept of “additionality” deserves highlighting. Quality offsets must produce GHG emissions reduction “in addition” to what would have occurred anyway or as a matter of “business as usual.” Carbon offsets will be viewed skeptically until the carbon offset market identifies convincing ways to demonstrate additionality.

A confusing offset condition is that of permanence. This criteria does not require that the carbon offset be permanent in the sense of producing carbon reductions year after year forever. Quite the contrary since it is understood that the projects which produce carbon reduction will not last forever and thus carbon offsets are time-bounded instruments. For example, your school’s purchase of carbon offsets may make it possible for a wind turbine to be erected and operated – however, that turbine will only last for a discrete number of years and your claim to be offsetting carbon through your investment in that turbine lasts only as long as the turbine lasts (or for whatever duration specified by your offset).

The permanence criteria applies primarily to biological sequestration. Imagine that you have purchased carbon offsets based on funding a reforestation project. If the trees your offset money helped plant and care for are eventually cut down, that act not only ends any future carbon sequestration by those trees but may also undo and releases back into the atmosphere the carbon which was biologically sequestered by those trees in previous years – thus undoing the offsets that you previously counted. The “permanence” requirement is to prevent that circumstance from occurring. It underscores the difficulty of using and counting biological carbon sequestration.

5.9.4 Buying or Creating Carbon Offsets

Schools can purchase offsets on retail and wholesale markets or create them by developing projects which result in emissions reductions. The latter option allows colleges and universities to work with groups and individuals in their own communities or in remote locations to create clean energy or energy saving projects. The Guidelines accompanying the ACUPCC Voluntary Carbon Offset Protocol provide helpful qualifying criteria for these projects.

When should you begin purchasing carbon offsets? Since there is a cost associated with carbon offsets, the natural tendency would be to delay buying offsets as long as possible. Delay would also allow the market to mature and become more reliable before jumping in.

A logical approach to timing the purchase of carbon offsets would be to buy them incrementally and in appropriate amounts to help meet aggressive interim GHG emissions targets in your climate action plan or when interim targets are unexpectedly not fully met because of insufficient internal emissions reduction efforts.

If you are planning to create your own carbon offsets by sponsoring clean energy projects in your own community or state, then work on these projects should begin much earlier than you expect to be able to claim the offsets. Of course, even if you are planning to simply purchase offsets from the market, research and planning in advance of anticipated purchase dates is essential.

For more information about carbon offsets, please see the [FAQ section][2] of the ACUPCC Voluntary Carbon Offset Protocol. Scroll down and see links to various recommended resources on carbon offsets. Also see Clean Air Cool Planet's Consumer's Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers -- though this report is somewhat dated (2006).

5.9.5 Campus Forest and Lands as Carbon Offsets?

The search for cost-effective ways of off-setting campus carbon emissions may lead some colleges and universities to consider counting the carbon which campus biomass removes from the atmosphere and sequesters annually. Campuses with large forested land areas would seem to have a large offset potential. However, there is a big difference between forests which sequester carbon (they all do unless they stop growing, are cut, or burned) and forests whose carbon sequestration can count as a legitimate carbon offset. In order for campus biological carbon sequestration to count as a carbon offset that sequestration must be “additional” to what would have occurred anyway. In other words, it would be misleading to count the carbon which is sequestered in already existing forest land as an offset and subtract that carbon from your campus GHG emissions total. However, carbon sequestration of newly planted forest could be counted as an offset as could any additional carbon uptake associated with changes in forest management.

The issue of “permanence” also arises when we consider biological carbon sequestration. See section above for more details.

While there are legitimate barriers to counting campus biomass carbon sequestration as carbon offsets in your GHG inventory or taking credit for them in your CAP, it still makes sense to protect campus green space and forested land – for all the traditional environmental and social reasons and because of climate change. When trees are cut down, they are lost as a carbon sink. Moreover, even if the carbon sequestration associated with campus biomass cannot be counted as an offset, it is still OK to state in your GHG inventory summary or CAP that your campus has X amount of forested land and those trees are sequestering Y amount of carbon annually. Publicizing that kind of information may help campus environmental advocates protect campus greenspace when plans are unveiled to start cutting trees on campus to clear land for that next campus research building, dormitory or apartment complex.

For more information on this complicated issue, see page 42 of the ACUPCC’s Investing in Carbon Offsets: Guidelines for ACUPCC Institutions. Also see the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry Guidance for GHG Project Accounting.

[2]: http:// http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/offsetprotocol.php#FAQs