Kenza Bryan’s article “Amazon sway over carbon credit market raises alarm” (Report, September 2) helpfully exposes the influence of major tech greenhouse gas emitters.
The most significant cause for concern, however, is how tech groups will benefit from a change in standards. It is this that should alarm scientists and others concerned about the need to rapidly reduce fossil fuel emissions.
The Science Based Targets initiative, a globally renowned body relied upon by groups such as Apple and H&M to set voluntary standards for corporate climate action, does not allow companies to use carbon offsets to achieve their net zero targets. This makes scientific sense, as the use of offsets does not align with Paris goals and a science-based trajectory to keep below 1.5C of warming.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change includes no mention of carbon offsets because they do not actually lead to reducing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Why are corporates so intent on changing the rules? The graphs in the article make crystal clear both the rapidly rising emissions of tech groups and how creative corporate Scope 2 accounting — that is the indirect emissions from purchased energy, such as electricity for heating as well as cooling — when combined with renewable energy offset credits (RECs) is being used to hide those emissions.
The next holy grail for tech groups is expanding the use of offsets in Scope 3 accounting — emissions that lie outside a company’s own boundaries, elsewhere in its value chain — to further obscure their rising emissions. Offsets will help tech companies like Amazon and Meta continue to distract attention, not only from their current climate inaction, but also the obscene expected growth in emissions that they show no signs or interest in containing.
Doreen Stabinsky
Member, SBTi’s Technical Council: Professor of Global Environmental Politics, College of the Atlantic, Mount Desert, ME, US
