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Researchers Found Carbon Credits Were Mostly Worthless — Now Corporate America Is Responding With New Solutions | Finks AI

Companies claim to care about the environment and climate, but some of their “commitments” to “net zero” or “neutral carbon emissions” have proven to be costly and ineffective — just look at the carbon markets. For years, many corporate goliaths remediated their carbon emissions — not by reducing pollution, but through business transactions. The only problem? Some of them are actually making pollution worse.

Excuses to pollute: In the carbon markets, large corporations could buy cheap carbon offsets from non-government accrediting agencies — organizations that claim to oversee, review, and issue credits for projects that supposedly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. With rapidly growing demand, analysts projected that hundreds of billions of dollars would be spent on credits within years. Then, researchers found that many of these balancing measures were worthless.

Since 2021, at least three leading carbon credit accrediting agencies — The Nature Conservancy, Gold Standard, and Verra — have been accused of facilitating “the sale of meaningless carbon credits,” prompting extensive internal reviews.
As a result, major corporations like Chevron, Delta, and BP have ended or reduced their purchases from carbon markets, leading to a 10% drop in offset purchases in 2023, marking the second consecutive year of declines.

Taking Credit

Despite the junk status of many carbon credits, companies will likely continue to embellish their environmental records, insisting they are “net neutral” when, in reality, they are not. To bring order to the chaotic carbon markets, countries are expected to propose a centralized, UN-backed market for carbon reductions. However, many businesses now find that trusting others to do good with their money is no longer enough.

Airlines like Jet2, Alaska, and JetBlue report that they’ve curtailed their reliance on emissions permits and will instead invest in sustainable aviation fuel — a more direct method of lowering their environmental impact.
Tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are directly investing in cleaner energy sources to power their data centers and offices, including nuclear power plants, power matching agreements, and new supplier standards.

Out of thin air: For some companies that can make significant changes, more credible alternatives to carbon offsets may be on the horizon. Over 800 startups are now working on “carbon removals,” a more expensive and verifiable technology that extracts CO₂ from the air and stores it underground. Given the challenges in tracking carbon offset projects, removals could soon emerge as a more reliable alternative to their predecessors.

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Researchers Found Carbon Credits Were Mostly Worthless — Now Corporate America Is Responding With New Solutions

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Taking Credit