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Whether Insetting or Offsetting, There's No Forgetting it's Mostly Greenwash [1]

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Date: 2023-02-23  

You’ve heard of carbon offsetting, but get ready for its even more dubious sibling, carbon insetting. “Insetting” is a net zero buzzword that has been gaining traction as an alternative to the reputationally damaged concept of carbon offsetting, but experts are saying it’s a greenwashing tactic that’s actually even worse than offsetting.

If you haven't heard of carbon offsetting or just need a refresher, it's when an institution compensates for its carbon dioxide emissions by funding a project to make equivalent reductions in atmospheric CO2 levels. In theory, offsetting can fund important reforestation and renewable energy projects without having to address a company's possibly difficult-to-reduce emissions. In practice, though, offsetting has become “a scammer’s dream scheme” and a major greenwashing tactic, according to Greenpeace , which considers it “a licence to keep polluting, [that] distracts us all from the real work of cutting emissions.” Just last month, an investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial revealed that over 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by Verra, the leading certifier of carbon credits, “are likely to be ‘phantom credits’ and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.”

Insetting, by contrast, sounds in theory like companies are doing the hard work of carbon reduction or removal within their own supply chains, instead of outsourcing these key efforts. Unfortunately, in practice, this too seems to be little more than greenwash, according to a new report by NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch that evaluated the emission reduction and net-zero targets of 24 major multinational companies. Report co-author Silke Mooldijk told Climate Home News , “The impression is that offsetting has gained a bad reputation, so companies are moving to a different term to avoid criticism, rather than abandoning it altogether. This distracts from the need for real emission reductions.”

What's the problem with companies doing emission reductions in-house, instead of contracting them out? Well, the report warns, “Offsetting under the guise of ‘insetting’ is gaining traction and legitimacy, although this practice leads to low credibility offsetting claims and the double counting of emission reductions.”

For insetting that involves emission reduction projects, companies could claim credit for reducing emissions and then also count that "insetting" (again) as though it offsets their remaining emissions.

On top of the double-counting issue, there's the pesky problem of whether or not these reductions are real and long-term. For insetting that involves carbon dioxide removals in the supply chain, not only are there issues with “the lack of permanence of the carbon storage and the scarcity of nature-based solutions for carbon dioxide removals,” but also, “the companies implementing an insetting approach may not seek independent measurement and verification of the carbon dioxide removals.”

So, instead of offsetting by making verifiable transactions with independent bodies open to public scrutiny and governed by third-party standards, companies are just telling us to trust that they're doing it themselves. It's more or less the same as offsetting, but with less transparency and lower standards. What could go wrong?

According to the new report, companies like Nestlé and PepsiCo are lobbying to legitimize insetting and have succeeded in getting the Science Based Targets initiative (a partnership of the UN Global Compact, CDP, the World Resources Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature) to recognize the greenwash-on-greenwash terminology.

In place of offsetting and insetting, NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch recommend the climate contribution approach, which is defined as “finance provided by a company to support climate change action beyond the company’s own value chain, without claiming to neutralise its own emissions.” Climate contributions are more transparent than offsetting strategies because they don’t claim to cancel out a company’s emissions, and they are also more constructive and ambitious, as they encourage companies to compete to voluntarily provide as much concrete financial support as possible.

Given the urgent need for climate action, one can only hope that more companies decide to implement climate contribution approaches and commit to actually reducing their carbon emissions, instead of just changing up the buzzwords that they use to greenwash their climate strategies.

Offsetting, insetting… more like upsetting!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/23/2154581/-Whether-Insetting-or-Offsetting-There-s-No-Forgetting-it-s-Mostly-Greenwash

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