this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Many companies are net0 or whatever they call it. The one I work for is, for instance. But it is a scam my company fell for, pushed by the "everyone is doing it".
But they are absolutely not co2 neutral. Being co2 neutral requires to have a system to turn co2 into o2 and some biologically useful compounds near the emission site. That system must be "newly" created, it couldn't exist before. Otherwise it is not "going" co2 neutral, it is doing nothing and pretend to do something.
Easiest way to create such system is to plant trees nearby the emission site, but it takes a long time before such trees reach an appropriate level of transformation turnover
Yeah, I saw some of your other comments regarding the 3rd world tree offsets. Definitely the shady recs I was talking about. The shady req pushers drive me nuts, the legislation on what you can and can't count is usually pretty clear but they're just spam. I would love to see govt action against them
Usually net zero claims are claimed by a certain date so I'm unsure if you're saying your company thinks it's at net zero (very few are as outlined in most govts reporting reqs) or they have a commitment and are claiming Z% progress. This is also a good example of the balkinization of terms. Net zero to me means "company no longer emitting in scope 1 and 2 by x year".
If it's the latter that's where the whole review and pushback on net zero as a marketing term is, some of these companies just went out and bought up all the renewable energy on the market, didn't touch anything they cant just buy and are now bitching they don't get to claim net zero progress. I agree with the committees, fuck those companies. If you're not putting in the work then you shouldn't be able to claim that.
Re: the new system, you're describing the concept of additionallity to the power grid as well. We will ultimately reach a point where we've only got thinga like new growth forests or some other carbon sequestration but we've got a really long way to even shut off the flow of CO2.
Right now a lot of focus is on getting scope 1 and 2 emissions to 0 (what you consume vs purchase for raw energy) vs scope 3 (all your suppliers and users emissions too). I believe you may be describing a Scope 3 CO2 neutral. In which case I agree, but goodluck getting most of our politicians right now to agree.
It's not the perfect end goal but the logic goes that if every company has to get to net zero via supply chain and adding to the grid, we might see scope 3 hit zero with additional crack down on laggards?
Editing: just to add that interim usage of biogenic fuels is a good way to cut CO2 and only release CH4 and N2O in very very limited quantities (from what I've seen usually less than those in non biogenic sources). theoretically committing capital to plant or grow these sources now could be used to "reduce" carbon impact in future supply chains. Probably has some issues.