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Carbon offsets and credits

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Forestry projects are one source of carbon offsets.

A carbon offset is a financial instrument representing a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Although there are six primary categories of greenhouse gases,[1] carbon offsets are measured in metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e). One carbon offset represents the reduction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide, or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases.

There are two primary markets for carbon offsets. In the larger compliance market, companies, governments or other entities buy carbon offsets in order to comply with caps on the total amount of carbon dioxide they are allowed to emit. In 2006, about $5.5 billion dollars of carbon offsets were purchased in the compliance market, representing about 1.6 billion metric tons of CO2e reductions.[2]

In the much smaller voluntary market, individuals, companies, or governments purcahse carbon offsets to mitigate their own greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, electricity use, and other sources. For example, an individual might purchase carbon offsets to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions caused by personal air travel. In 2006, about $91 million of carbon offsets were purchased in the voluntary market, representing about 24 million metric tons of CO2e reductions.[3]

Offsets are typically generated from emissions-reducing projects. The most common project type is renewable energy, such as wind farms, biomass energy, or hydroelectric dams. Other common project types include energy efficiency projects, the destruction of industrial pollutants or agricultural byproducts, destruction of landfill methane, and forestry projects.[4] Purchase and withdrawal of emissions trading credits also occurs, which creates a connection between the voluntary and regulated carbon markets.

Carbon offsetting as part of a "carbon neutral" lifestyle has gained some appeal and momentum mainly among consumers in western countries who have become aware and concerned about the potentially negative environmental effects of energy-intensive lifestyles and economies. The Kyoto Protocol has sanctioned offsets as a way for governments and private companies to earn carbon credits which can be traded on a marketplace. The protocol established the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which validates and measures projects to ensure they produce authentic benefits and are genuinely "additional" activities that would not otherwise have been undertaken. Organisations that have difficulty meeting their emissions quota are able to offset by buying CDM-approved Certified Emissions Reductions. The CDM encourages projects that involve, for example, sustainable power generation, changes in land use, and forestry, although not all trading countries allow their companies to buy all types of credit.

The commercial system has contributed to the increasing popularity of voluntary offsets among private individuals, companies, and organizations. Offsets may be cheaper or more convenient alternatives to reducing one's own fossil-fuel consumption. However, some critics object to carbon offsets, and many have questioned the benefits of certain types of offsets, such as tree planting. [5]

Features of carbon offsets

Carbon offsets have several common features that affect how and where they can be used.

  • Vintage. Also referred to as "maturity," an offset's vintage refers to the year in which the carbon reduction takes place.[6] Vintage affects both the financial and environmental value of an offset. Reductions that take place very far in the future have less environmental benefit than reductions taking place in the near term, and typically cost less.[citation needed]
  • Source. Offsets come from identifiable projects or activities that result in emissions reductions. Different methodologies are used for measuring and verifying emissions reductions, depending on project type and size.[7] Different project types also have different secondary benefits (or "co-benefits"). For example, projects that reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions can also improve water quality by reducing fertilizer usage.[8]
  • Certification regime. Offsets are typically created for purchase within a specific trading market. To be eligible for purchase within a market, offsets must be certified and registered under an appropriate regime, or set of protocols. For example, the Chicago Climate Exchange uses one set of protocols,[9] and the CDM another.[10] In the voluntary market, a variety of industry standards are emerging to provide comparable levels of verification and quality assurance, but such efforts are at an early stage of development.[11]

Sources of carbon offsets

Tree planting

Tree planting includes not only recreating natural forests (reforestation) and avoiding deforestation, but also monoculture tree farming on plantations for logging, biodiesel production, or other commercial purposes. The term "reforestation" is nevertheless sometimes applied in this context to monoculture tree farming as well as the recreation of natural forests. There is also afforestation, which means establishing forests particularly on land not previously forested. This can produce higher carbon sequestration rates because the level of carbon in such land is comparatively low. Trees provide other benefits in addition to capturing carbon dioxide, such as providing organismal habitats, providing renewable resources, such as building materials, and preventing soil erosion.

Many forestry offset projects have been conceived or conducted in ways that are vulnerable to criticism, drawing their net benefits into question.[who?] Significant concern also arises over the permanence of carbon storage in trees and forests, as potential future clearing or burning of the forest would return the stored carbon to the atmosphere.[citation needed] In addition, a recent study has claimed that plants are a significant source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, raising the possibility that trees and other terrestrial plants may be significant contributors to global methane levels in the atmosphere. [12] However, this claim has been disputed recently by findings in another study [13], which has cast some doubt over whether plants are significant emitters of methane. The source of methane plumes found above, for example, tropical forests [14] is therefore still unknown.

In July, 2007, Vatican City accepted an offer that will make it the only carbon neutral state for the year, due to the donation of the Vatican Climate Forest in Hungary. The forest is to be sized to offset the year's carbon dioxide emissions.[15]

Climate impacts

Trees sequester carbon through photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide and water into molecular dioxygen (O2) and plant organic matter, such as carbohydrates (e.g., cellulose). Hence, forests that grow in area or density and thus increase in organic biomass will reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. (Carbon is released as CO2 if a tree or its lumber burns or decays, but as long as the forest is able to grow back at the same rate as its biomass is lost due to oxidation of organic carbon, the net result is carbon neutral.) In their 2001 assessment, the IPCC estimated the potential of biological mitigation options (mainly tree planting) is on the order of 100 Gigatonnes of carbon (cumulative) by 2050, equivalent to about 10% to 20% of projected fossil fuel emissions during that period. [16]

However, the global cooling effect of forests from carbon sequestration is not the only factor to be considered. For example, the planting of new forests may initially release some of the area's existing carbon stores into the atmosphere. Specifically, the conversion of peat bogs into oil palm plantations has made Indonesia the world's third largest producer of greenhouse gases. [17]

Compared to less vegetated lands, forests affect climate in three main ways:

  • Cooling the Earth by functioning as carbon sinks.
  • Cooling the Earth by adding water vapor to the atmosphere and thereby increasing cloudiness.
  • Warming the Earth by absorbing a high percentage of sunlight due to the low reflectivity of a forest's dark surfaces. This warming effect, or reduced albedo, is large where evergreen forests, which have very low reflectivity, shade snow cover, which is highly reflective.

To date, most tree-planting offset strategies have taken only the first effect into account. A study published in December 2005 combined all these effects and found that tropical forestation has a large net cooling effect, because of increased cloudiness and because of high tropical growth and carbon sequestration rates. [18]

Trees grow three times faster in the tropics than in temperate zones; each tree in the rainy tropics removes about 22 kilograms (50 pounds) of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.[19] However, this study found little to no net global cooling from tree planting in temperate climates, where warming due to sunlight absorption by trees counteracts the global cooling effect of carbon sequestration. Furthermore, this study confirmed earlier findings that reforestation of colder regions — where long periods of snow cover, evergreen trees, and slow sequestration rates prevail — probably results in global warming.

According to Ken Caldeira, a study co-author from the Carnegie Institution for Science:

"To plant forests outside of the tropics to mitigate climate change is a waste of time. To prevent climate change, we need to transform our energy system. It is only by transforming our energy system and preserving natural habitat, such as forests, that we can maintain a healthy environment. To prevent climate change, we must focus on effective strategies and not just ‘feel-good’ strategies." [20]

His premise that grassland reflects more sun, keeping temperatures lower, is, however, applicable only in arid regions. A well-watered lawn, for example, is as green as a tree, but absorbs far less CO2. [citation needed] Deciduous trees also have the advantage of providing shade in the summer and sunlight in the winter; so these trees, when planted close to houses, can be utilized to help increase energy efficiency of these houses.

Furthermore, the described warming effect (of temperate and boreal latitude forest) is only apparent once the trees have grown to create a dense 'close canopy', and it is at precisely this point that trees grown for offset purposes should be harvested and their absorbed carbon fixed for the long-term as timber.

Costs

While the benefits of tree-planting are subject to debate, the costs are low [2]compared to many other mitigation options. The IPCC has concluded that "The mitigation costs through forestry can be quite modest (US$0.1–US$20 / metric ton carbon dioxide) in some tropical developing countries.... The costs of biological mitigation, therefore, are low compared to those of many other alternative measures".[16] The cost effectiveness of tropical reforestation is due not only to growth rate, but also to farmers from tropical developing countries who voluntarily plant and nurture tree species which can improve the productivity of their lands.[21] As little as US$90 will plant 900 trees, enough to annually remove as much carbon dioxide as is annually generated by the fossil-fuel usage of an average United States resident.[22]

Types of trees planted

A eucalyptus plantation

The type of tree planted may have great influence on the environmental outcomes. Planting the wrong kind of trees, such as monocultures of eucalyptus where they are not native species, can devastate the lands of the local people.[23] However, it is often much more profitable to outside interests to plant non-native fast-growing trees, such as eucalyptus or pine (e.g., Pinus radiata or Pinus caribaea), even though the environmental and biodiversity benefits of such monoculture plantations are not comparable to native forest, and such offset projects are frequently objects of controversy (see below).

To promote the growth of native ecosystems, many environmentalists advocate only indigenous trees be planted. A practical solution is to plant tough, fast-growing native tree species which begin rebuilding the land. Planting non-invasive trees that assist in the natural return of indigenous species is called "assisted natural regeneration." There are many such species that can be planted, of which about 12 are in widespread use, such as Leucaena leucocephala.[24]

Avoided deforestation

Some offsets aim at carbon benefits from avoided deforestation. It may involve training developing-world communities in the production, sale, and use of fuel-efficient stoves. As almost half of the world's people burn wood (or fiber or dung) for their cooking and heating needs, fuel-efficient cook stoves can reduce fuel wood consumption by 30 to 50%, though the warming of the earth due to decreases in particulate matter (i.e. smoke) from such fuel-efficient stoves has not been addressed.[24]

Renewable energy

Renewable energy offsets commonly include wind power, solar power, hydroelectric power and biofuel. Some of these offsets are used to reduce the cost differential between renewable and conventional energy production, increasing the commercial viability of a choice to use renewable energy sources. Others operate in developing countries, for example by training local communities to produce biodiesel from jatropha oil.

Some renewable energy offset projects are sold in multiple markets, such as the Te Apiti Wind Farm in New Zealand, a project certified to the privately operated CDM Gold Standard which supplies offsets to the Dutch Government, international bank HSBC, and private citizens.

A connection is sometimes made between carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates (RECs), also known as Green Tags. An REC represents a certain quantity of electricity which was generated from renewable sources. By purchasing an REC, the customer pays money to a renewable energy project owner. Typically, the windmill or solar panels have already been installed which leads to lower carbon emissions. Whether this constitutes a true offset is open to debate.

In the United States, Renewable energy investment and construction, and the market for Renewable Energy Credits is driven by regulations requiring a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), not individual offsets. There is a separate market that exists between power utilities and renewable energy providers that requires utilities to purchase RECs. This is to ensure that there is a minimum amount of green power in an electrical grid's energy distribution. When the price for RECs fall below the price for true carbon offset credits, RECs will be converted from their typical KWhr units and resold as Metric tonns of CO2 offsets. The actual greenhouse gas offset associated with Renewable Energy Credits cannot be calculated directly, but is based upon regional estimates.

Energy conservation

While carbon offsets which fund renewable energy projects help lower the carbon intensity of energy supply, energy conservation projects seek to reduce the overall demand for energy. Carbon offsets in this category fund projects of several types:

  1. Cogeneration plants generate both electricity and heat from the same power source, thus improving upon the energy efficiency of most power plants which waste the energy generated as heat.
  2. Fuel efficiency projects replace a combustion device with one which uses less fuel per unit of energy provided. Assuming energy demand does not change, this reduces the carbon dioxide emitted.
  3. Energy-efficient buildings reduce the amount of energy wasted in buildings through efficient heating, cooling or lighting systems. In particular, the replacement of incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps can have a drastic effect on energy consumption. New buildings can also be constructed using less carbon-intensive input materials.

Methane collection and combustion

Some offset projects consist of combusting or containing methane generated by farm animals [25], landfills[26] or other industrial waste. Methane has a Global warming potential (GWP) 23 times that of CO2; when combusted, each molecule of methane is converted to one molecule of CO2, thus reducing the global warming effect by 96%. Methane can also be processed using an anaerobic digester which generates electricity or heat.

An example of a project using a anaerobic digester can be found in Chile where in December 2000, the largest pork production company in Chile, initiated a voluntary process to implement advanced waste management systems (anaerobic and aerobic digestion of hog manure), in order to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. [27]

Main article: Carbon Credit

Once it has been accredited by the UNFCCC a carbon offset project can be used as carbon credit and linked with official emission trading schemes, such as the European Union Emission Trading Scheme or Kyoto Protocol, as Certified Emission Reductions. European emission allowances for the 2008-2012 second phase were selling for between 21 and 24 Euros per metric ton of CO2 as of July 2007.

The voluntary Chicago Climate Exchange also includes a carbon credit scheme in conjunction with voluntary offset providers like American-based eCO2pass, Standard Carbon and Terrapass.

A credit mechanism that uses offsetting may be incorporated in proposed schemes such as the Australian Carbon Exchange.

Other

A UK offset provider set up a carbon offsetting scheme which set up a secondary market for treadle pumps in developing countries. These pumps are used by farmers, using human power, in place of diesel pumps. [28] However, given that treadle pumps are best suited to pumping shallow water, while diesel pumps are usually used to pump water from deep boreholes, it is not clear that the treadle pumps are actually achieving real emissions reductions. Other companies have explored and rejected treadle pumps as a viable carbon offsetting approach due to these concerns.

Accounting for and verifying reductions

Due to their indirect nature, many types of offset are difficult to verify. Some providers obtain independent certification that their offsets are accurately measured, to distance themselves from potentially fraudulent competitors. The credibility of the various certification providers is often questioned. Certified offsets may be purchased from commercial or non-profit organizations for US$1–30 per tonne of CO2,[29] due to fluctuations of market price. Annual carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries range from 6 to 23 tons per capita.[22]

Accounting systems differ on what constitutes a valid offset for voluntary reduction systems and for mandatory reduction systems. However formal standards for quantification of offsets are now being developed based on collaboration between emitters, regulators, environmentalists and project developers. These standards include the Voluntary Carbon Standard and the CDM Gold Standard, the latter of which expands upon the requirements for the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol.

Accounting of offsets may address the following basic areas:

  • Baseline and Measurement - What emissions would occur in the absence of a proposed project? And how are the emissions which occur after the project is performed going to be measured?
  • Additionality - Would the project occur anyway without the investment raised by selling carbon offset credits? There are two common reasons why a project may lack additionality: (a) if it is intrinsically financially worthwhile due to energy cost savings, and (b) if it had to be performed due to environmental laws or regulations.
  • Permanence - Are some benefits of the reductions reversible? (for example, trees may be harvested to burn the wood; many trees, in geological terms, have relatively short life spans, making them unsuitable for long-term carbon sequestration; and does growing trees for fuel wood decrease the need for fossil fuel?) If woodlands are increasing in area or density, then carbon is being sequestered. After roughly 50 years, newly planted forests will reach maturity and remove carbon dioxide more slowly.
  • Leakage - Does implementing the project cause higher emissions outside the project boundary?

Co-benefits

While the primary goal of carbon offsets is to reduce global carbon emissions, many offset projects also claim to lead to improvements in the quality of life for a local population. These additional improvements are termed co-benefits, and may be considered when evaluating and comparing carbon offset projects. Some possible cobenefits from a project which replaces wood burning stoves with ovens which use a less carbon-intensive fuel include:

  • Lower non greenhouse gas pollution, which improves health in the home.
  • Improved safety for women who used to go alone into the forest to collect firewood, and were thus exposed to danger of violence.
  • Better education for children who need no longer spend so much time collecting wood fuel.
  • Better preservation of forests, which are an important habitat for wildlife.

Carbon offset projects can also negatively affect quality of life. For example, people who earn their livelihoods from collecting firewood and selling it to households could become unemployed if firewood is no longer used. A paper from the Overseas Development Institute offers some indicators to be used in assessing the potential developmental impacts of voluntary carbon offset schemes[30]:

  • What potential does the project have for income generation?
  • What effects might a project have on future changes in land use and could conflicts arise from this?
  • Can small-scale producers engage in the scheme?
  • What are the 'add on' benefits to the country - for example, will it assist capacity-building in local institutions?[31]

Controversies

Some disagree with the principle of carbon offsets. George Monbiot, an English environmentalist and writer, has compared carbon offsets to the practice of purchasing indulgences during the Middle Ages, whereby people believed they could purchase forgiveness for their sins (instead of actually repenting and not sinning anymore). Monbiot also says that carbon offsets are an excuse for business as usual with regards to pollution.[32] Other critics accuse some offset schemes of using questionable or fraudulent methods in their calculation of emissions reductions.[33]

The current carbon trading market has also been criticized as an unregulated activity that has questionable results to actually offset or reduce carbon emissions due to the lack of standards. This situation also causes concerns regarding the authenticity of some companies dealing in carbon offsets.[34]

It has also been argued that using carbon offsets actually increases demand for polluting sources of power since overall power consumption is not being reduced.[35]

Other critics disagree with the scientific consensus on the significance of anthropogenic climate change and therefore reject the usefulness of carbon offsetting on principle.

TerraPass and the Oscars

Founded as a classroom project at the Wharton School, TerraPass received widespread attention for offset services provided to the Academy Awards and a subsequent BusinessWeek investigation. [36] According to BusinessWeek, the bulk of offsets provided to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were purchased from a methane recapturing project in Tontitown, Arkansas, in which methane produced at a landfill is burned and released as carbon dioxide. Contrary to the assumption that purchasing offsets resulted in additional methane recapture, BusinessWeek reported that the Tontitown recapture project predated TerraPass' offsets, that the landfill owners, Waste Management, had been governmentally compelled to increase the amount of recapture, and that the owners themselves reported that they would have continued to invest in the project regardless of the TerraPass offsets. The BusinessWeek article was also critical of the proportion of offset monies that actually make it from the consumer/purchaser to the offsetting project. For example, BusinessWeek spoke to dairy farmers recapturing methane from cow manure and found that the farmers received $2 out of every $9 transacted. Regarding the Tontitown methane flaring project, TerraPass responded that an internal investigation revealed that the investment in the methane flaring system far exceeded legal requirements, that as much as 99% of the methane captured by the system was a result of additional investments, and that Waste Management invested further into expanding the system later without any regulatory pressure. [37]

FACE-PROFAFOR in Ecuador

In Ecuador, the Dutch FACE Foundation has an offset project in the Andean Páramo involving 220 square kilometres of eucalyptus and pine planted, of which 200 square kilometres is certified under the Forest Stewardship Council system (by SGS). Following an investigation, the NGO Acción Ecológica criticized the project for destroying a valuable Páramo ecosystem by introducing exotic tree species, causing the release of much soil carbon into the atmosphere, and for harming local communities who had entered into contracts with the FACE Foundation to plant the trees.[38]

East Africa

A Norwegian firm called Tree Farms (or Fjordgløtt, as it was then called) started operations in Uganda and Tanzania (and later in Malawi). In Uganda, it obtained a very cheap 50-year lease on 51.6 square kilometres east of the town Jinja in the Bukaleba Forest Reserve on Lake Victoria. Tree Farms planned to plant the land mainly with eucalyptus and fast-growing pines. The project has been criticized for forcing people in five communities off their lands and paying too little rent for the land.[39]

In another project in Uganda, the aforementioned Dutch FACE Foundation in 1995 entered into an agreement with the Ugandan authorities to plant trees on 250 square kilometres inside Mount Elgon National Park. The project involves planting a two to three kilometer-wide strip of trees (including eucalyptus) just inside the 211 kilometer boundary of the National Park. The project is certified under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) scheme and managed by SGS Qualfor, a leading verification and certification company.

However, a recent World Rainforest Movement report[40] documents land disputes and human rights abuses at Mount Elgon. In March 2002, a few days before SGS issued a certificate for the Forest Stewardship Council for Mount Elgon, the UWA evicted more than 300 families from the area and destroyed their homes and crops. That the project was taking place in an area of on-going land conflict and alleged human rights abuses did not make it into SGS’s report. SGS’s credibility has also been called into question by the decision of the FSC’s Accreditation Service to suspend another of its certificates, issued to the Barama company in Guyana. The report also alleges that workers are paid well below subsistence rates for tending the trees.

Media investigations

In 2007, the Financial Times conducted an investigation of the voluntary (unregulated) carbon offsets industry[41]. Among the findings they reported were:

  • Widespread instances of people and organizations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
  • Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
  • Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
  • A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
  • Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.

Other mainstream media which have covered these issues include the Christian Science Monitor [3], BusinessWeek [4], The Guardian [5], Mother Jones [6], and The New York Times [7].

Point Carbon has reported on an inconsistent approach with regards to some hydro-electric projects as carbon offsets; some countries in the EU are not allowing large projects into the EU ETS, because of their environmental impacts, even though they have been individually approved by the UNFCCC and World Commission on Dams.[42].

See also

References

  1. ^ 2001 report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
  2. ^ World Bank, State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2007
  3. ^ Ecosystem Marketplace, State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2007
  4. ^ CDM projects by type
  5. ^ Gillenwater, Michael (2007). "Policing the voluntary carbon market". Nature Reports Climate Change. 6 (0711): 85–87. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ Chicago Climate Exchange offsets by vintage year
  7. ^ CDM project methodologies
  8. ^ United States Environmental Protection Agency, Carbon Sequestration in Agriculture and Forestry
  9. ^ Chicago Climate Exchange, Offset Project Registration, Verification & Crediting Procedure
  10. ^ CDM, Project Cycle - how to
  11. ^ Making Sense of the Voluntary Carbon Market: A Comparison of Carbon Offset Standards
  12. ^ Keppler F, Hamilton JT, Brass M, Röckmann T. (2006). "Methane emissions from terrestrial plants under aerobic conditions". Nature. 439: 187–191. PMID 16407949.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ Dueck TA; et al. (2007). "No evidence for substantial aerobic methane emission by terrestrial plants: a 13C-labelling approach". New Phytologist. 175: 29–35. PMID 17547664. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
  14. ^ Frankenberg C, Meirink JF, Van Weele M, Platt U, Wagner T. (2005). "Assessing methane emissions from global space-borne observations". Science. 308: 1010–1014. PMID 15774724.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ The Vatican to go carbon neutral
  16. ^ a b Working Group III (2001). Bert Metz (ed.). Climate Change 2001: Mitigation. World Meteorological Organization. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. doi:10.2277/0521015022. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  17. ^ Delft Hydraulics (2006-07-12). "PEAT-CO2: Assessment of CO2 emissions from drained peat lands in SE Asia" (PDF). Wetlands International. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  18. ^ S. G. Gibbard (2005-10-29). "Climate effects of global land cover change". Geophysical Research Letters. 32. Retrieved 2007-02-22. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  19. ^ "Global Cooling Centers". Trees for the Future. 2006. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ Jha, Alok (2006-12-15). "Planting trees to save planet is pointless, say ecologists". The Guardian. To plant forests to mitigate climate change outside of the tropics is a waste of time
  21. ^ "Providing farmers and communities in the tropics with long-term assistance implementing environmentally and economically sustainable technologies". Sustainable Harvest International. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  22. ^ a b "CO2 Emissions". Environmental Indicators. United Nations Statistics Division. 2005. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  23. ^ Kittisiri, Areerat (1996-06-02). "Impacts of Monoculture: The Case of Eucalyptus Plantations in Thailand". Monocultures: Environmental and Social Effects and Sustainable Alternatives Conference. Southern Alternative Agriculture Network. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  24. ^ a b Dave Deppner (2005). The Global Cooling Answer Book (PDF) (Second Edition ed.). Trees for the Future. ISBN 1-879857-20-0. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  25. ^ Minnesota Project
  26. ^ Draft Offset Protocol [pdf]
  27. ^ [1]Water Contamination Prevention, Odour Control
  28. ^ Carbon-offsetting: All credit to them - Climate Change, Environment - Independent.co.uk
  29. ^ "Carbon Emissions Offset Directory". EcoBusinessLinks. 2007. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  30. ^ "Can standards for voluntary carbon offsets ensure development benefits?" (PDF). Overseas Development Institute. 2007. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  31. ^ "Making Voluntary Carbon Markets work better for the Poor: the case of Forestry Offsets". Overseas Development Institute. 2006. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  32. ^ "The trade in carbon offsets is an excuse for business as usual" by George Monbiot, The Guardian, October 18, 2006. A reprint of the article may be accessed at on Monbiot's website. Also see "Carbon Offset Business Takes Root" by Martin Kaste, NPR, Nov. 28, 2006.
  33. ^ The Carbon Neutral Myth: offset indulgences for your climate sins by Kevin Smith, Transnational Institute, January 2007, accessed July 23, 2007.
  34. ^ MSNBC article
  35. ^ Cutting carbon, The Economist.com, accessed Feb. 28, 2007; A tale of two markets The Economist.com, accessed March 1, 2007.
  36. ^ Business Week
  37. ^ TerraPass review wiki
  38. ^ Acción Ecológica Ecuador (2005). "Carbon Sink Plantations in the Ecuadorian Andes: Impacts of the Dutch FACE-PROFAFOR monoculture tree plantations project on indigenous and peasant communities" (PDF). World Rainforest Movement. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  39. ^ Lohmann, Larry (2006). "Carbon Trading: A critical conversation on climate change, privatization and power". Development Dialogue (48). Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Durban Group for Climate Justice and The Corner House. Retrieved 2007-02-22. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  40. ^ Chris Lang (2006). "A funny place to store carbon: UWA-FACE Foundation's tree planting project in Mount Elgon National Park, Uganda" (PDF). World Rainforest Movement. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  41. ^ Industry caught in carbon 'smokescreen' Fiona Harvey and Stephen Fidler, Financial Times 25 April 2007
  42. ^ ECX bans CERs from big hydro projects over EU eligibility uncertainty Point Carbon via River News, 9 October 2007

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