Happy Monday all!
Today I have 182 seconds of green updates for you, covering the following:
Carbon Offsets: a complicated but key market which we will invariably need to achieve the goals set out in the Paris agreement.
Cover me in sunshine: Poland’s recent solar growth is very promising, but there is a long road ahead!
Hey Google, do something cool: leveraging the real time availability of green energy around globe, Google is able to redirect its data processing work loads to minimise its carbon footprint.
Have any thoughts on the content or on any previous editions? Reach out and drop me a line by clicking the button below or messaging me on LinkedIn.
📖 The long read: Carbon Offsets
Carbon offsets are not as black and white as they may sound. Ideally, one would know exactly how much carbon a particular activity emitted and would then be able to precisely remove that amount by buying a carbon offset.
🤔 So, how do they work?
As mentioned above, Carbon offsets are products that individuals or corporates can purchase to draw a pre-determined amount of carbon out of the atmosphere in order to neutralise a certain activity (for example corporate travel). They will invariably be a key piece of the puzzle in tackling climate change and successfully sticking to the Paris agreement.
🥳 Are they popular?
The market for carbon offsets has exploded in the last few years. McKinsey estimates that in 2020, buyers retired carbon credits for c. 95 million tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), which would be more than twice as much as in 2017. FYI - the impact of a carbon credit can only be claimed—that is, counted toward a climate commitment—once the credit has been retired (canceled in a registry), after which it can no longer be sold (see here).
But it is not stopping there: The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVCM), initiated by Mark Carney (former Governor of the Bank of England) and chaired by Bill Winters (CEO of Standard Chartered), forecasts that to deliver against the 1.5 degree pathway demand for carbon offsets must increase by 15x or more by 2030 (whilst simultaneously increasing their underlying integrity).
😲 So what is the issue?
Markets are highly fragmented with inconsistent information and standards. There have been several media releases on the sector highlighting certain issuers and putting into question the overly optimistic assumptions of their offsets and flagging misrepresentations. In addition, a key factor that must be assessed when purchasing offsets is additionality: it means that purchasing the offset results in more carbon being absorbed than otherwise would have happened without its sale. It is not uncommon unfortunately for certain offsets to have zero additionality, ie. trees that were very unlikely to be cut down in the first instance being protected by a carbon offset. Such an offset has no real impact other than greenwashing and providing its buyer a false sense of righteousness.
As much as one can hope that bad actors in any industry slowly get flushed out, such actions can be particularly damaging to what is a fundamental industry in its early years: a public lack of trust in carbon offsets due to greenwashing or exaggeration could result in a delay in widespread adoption.
A wider risk is that people may start to think that offsets can act as a guilt free pass. The focus should still be on reducing our carbon footprint emissions in the first instance, rather than trying to eliminate what we’ve produced.
In an upcoming edition of the Green New Spiel I will be providing you with a list of offset options that I believe are worthy of our attention and business.
❓Do you you already buy carbon offsets? If so, message me as I would love to discuss the space further!❓
Read the TSVCM recent public consultation here.
Read more from Quartz here.
And in other news
🇵🇱 Poland is fly towards the Sun (and hopefully away from Coal)
Poland has lagged behind its European peers in reducing its dependence on coal. In a testament to the importance of government policies to encourage adoption, Poland’s installed solar capacity has increased from 0.2 megawatts (MW) in 2016 to 3.9 MW in 2020.
For reference (and as clearly broken down in Bill Gates’ new book which I recommend to absolutely everyone!) 1 MW is the energy demand of a small town.
Clearly this isn’t the end of the road: Poland still depends on coal for over 80% of its energy requirements and its coal plants are not set to close until 2049. However hopefully continued growth may bring that date forward a little.
Read more here.
💡 Hey Google, do something cool!
Maybe it is just my nerdy self finding this so simple in principle yet so amazing, but you need to read this too. Google introduced in April their carbon intelligent computing, which shifts the timing of its data processing work loads to different times of the day to leverage the availability of green power sources, like wind and solar.
They then announced on 18th May that they are now moving such workloads to data centres around the world which have the access to the most plentiful green energy. Ross Koningstein, Co-founder of Google’s Carbon-Intelligent Computing said that “Google can now shift moveable compute tasks between different data centers, based on regional hourly carbon-free energy availability.” This will allow Google cloud’s customers to prioritize cleaner grids and maximize the proportion of carbon-free energy that powers usage.
Would love to hear from any friends or connections at AWS or Microsoft Azure? Do you do the same? If not, when will you?
Read more from Google here and here.
❗️Just a reminder why is all this important? ❗️
As much as cool new developments in green energy and clean tech are exciting, we need to remember why they are also so critical to focus on and accelerate. Climate change isn’t waiting for us.
The biggest ‘berg’ on the planet has officially entered the room. An iceberg larger than Majorca has become detached from Antartica’s Ronne Ice Shelf and is floating up in the Weddell Sea.
Read the Forbes article here.
I hope you enjoyed today’s edition. As ever, do reach out if you have any questions, comments or would like to discuss any topic in further detail.
Thank you for reading and I hope you all have a great week.
Grazie,
Carlo
Hey Carlo. I've been contributing for +1 year here: https://ecologi.com/
I had actually considered setting up a service of the sort - for companies, not individuals - when I came across them. The team there is very approachable. I've exchanged some emails with them before.