• Forests

Can a New Satellite Company Shore Up Forest Carbon Offsets?

• Amazon
• carbon offsets
• carbon sinks
• CarbonPlan
• climate change
• forest
• Pachama

Corporations attempting to reduce their carbon footprint in the short run are restoring forests as a way of offsetting the carbon they release into the atmosphere. But some of these initiatives may be less effective than advertised. They are alleged to have inflated the amount of carbon saved from corporate ownership or claimed to protect land that was never under threat of logging. 

Why this Matters:  In 2020, companies bought more than 93 million carbon credits, equivalent to the pollution from 20 million cars in a year, a 33% increase over 2019.

• Forests

Verra Adopts Stronger Carbon Offset Standards For Forest Projects

• carbon offsets
• credits
• deforestation
• Forests
• logging
• rainforest
• reforestation
• registry
• VCS
• Verra

Verra, a non-profit that sets the standards used to assess carbon reduction projects and certifies their effectiveness, announced that it has strengthened its forest preservation and restoration standard, updating it based on its ten years of experience in evaluating projects and on the latest science.  

Why this Matters:  We cannot hold warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius without nature-based solutions such as preserving existing forests and restoring others

• Sustainability

Trump Administration Finalizes Weak Rules On Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Airplanes

• #COVID
• airlines
• biofuels
• carbon offsets
• greenhouse gas emissions

The first rules to attempt to reign in greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes went final last week — the only problem is that it won’t actually reduce emissions below current levels because they merely codify improvements the industry is already making, The Hill reported.

Why This Matters: Transportation emissions are one of the largest sources, and even though airline emissions are only around 9% of the U.S. total, they had been increasing greatly pre-pandemic.

• Forests

California’s Cap and Trade Offset System Created A Market for Forest Preservation

• California
• cap and trade
• carbon offsets
• conservation
• market
• trees

The Wall Street Journal published an eye-opening piece yesterday by Ryan Dezember (with beautiful photos and video by Brett Carlsen) that describes a burgeoning national market in carbon offset credits created by landowners promising to leave trees on their land standing.  The buyers are “investing” in trees and holding the credits — and it’s not […]

• Sustainability

New Report Finds Protecting 30% of US By 2030 Provides Major Carbon Offsets

• #30x30
• carbon offsets
• carbon sequestration
• carbon sink
• climate change
• nature based solutions

New research by the Center for American Progress (CAP) takes this analysis the next step and calculates the carbon sequestration benefits of various nature-based solutions being contemplated as part of the effort to conserve 30% of the U.S. lands and waters by 2030.  Forests and other lands in the United States, if properly conserved, have the potential to store an additional 1,000 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually.  

Why This Matters:  We need to use our full arsenal of tools to sequester carbon.

• Sustainability

Sustainability Pledges Take Flight in Airline Sector

• aviation
• biofuels
• carbon footprint
• carbon offsets
• Delta
• jetBlue

Delta Airlines (the world’s largest airline) and jetBlue have recently made big commitments to lower their carbon footprint, with Delta last week pledging to become “carbon neutral,” by 2030 and plan to invest $1 billion in achieving the goal, while JetBlue announced in January that it will be the first U.S. airline to pledge to offset all domestic flights beginning in July and United Airlines had previously committed $40 million to sustainable aviation development. 

Why This Matters:  If governments won’t force emissions to come down through regulation, then the fact that businesses are willing to make these pledges is even more significant.