Why We Don’t Sell Carbon Credits

Carbon Markets
Carbon offsets are credits that represent a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Organisations and individuals can buy them to offset their impact on climate change.

Whilst some industries have specific legally binding carbon reduction obligations relating to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, most operate in what is known as the voluntary carbon market. In this space individuals, companies, and organisations choose to purchase carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon emissions. Generally, these are used for marketing and PR purposes.

This sector is far better developed in other countries. In Ireland it is in a very early stage with most credits being generated through woodland creation initiatives.

Opportunities
In the last two years Hometree has been contacted by data centres, banks, hotels and pharmaceutical companies looking to purchase carbon credits. In fact, many of our calls open with “Do ye sell carbon?”

With some of these organisations we have had a couple of meetings. When credible people are talking about budgets stretching into tens of millions of euros it can be appealing to small but ambitious habitat restoration charities!

However, whenever the time came to decide, there was never a big yes in the office. We just couldn’t hand on heart say it would be the right thing for us to do.

Integrity
There are two main reasons we couldn’t give it a thumbs up. One relates to science. Fossil fuels are the primary cause of climate change and eliminating their use is our best hope of avoiding catastrophic temperature increases. When we burn these fuels we release carbon that has been locked out of our atmospheric cycle for millions of years. No matter how many trees we plant, we can’t offset the impact of this activity.

The second is the potential for carbon offsetting to distract or delay from other more important decarbonisation strategies. This short true story might show what we mean.

A few years back a friend of Hometree called the office. He is in a senior position in a multinational financial firm. He proudly announced his Dublin office was now carbon neutral. We asked him how this was achieved, assuming they had retrofitted the office, or maybe gone electric with the company car fleet.

Instead, he had called a carbon trading business in London, who for the sum of €4000 offset the office's entire carbon footprint. Safe in the knowledge he had ticked that box, my friend got back to his core elements of his job.

Counterintuitively, by selling our friend carbon credits, that company left him off the hook for making the real changes required.

Conclusion
Trees have countless benefits to society and undoubtedly their efficiency at taking carbon from the atmosphere is one of them, but an overreliance on them could see them becoming a distraction to the real job at hand – rapid reduction in fossil fuel usage.

We don’t wish to dismiss the whole concept of carbon markets, nor the good intentions of those involved. Systems are changing and improving all the time and the sustainability policies of businesses are less likely to allow offsets without first dealing internally with their carbon emissions.

But for us, for now, it doesn’t feel right.

In all, we do offer strategic partnerships and affiliate opportunities for businesses and individuals. And are always happy to explore other manners of collaboration beyond selling carbon credits.

If you would like to speak to about strategic partnerships or affiliate programmes, please email Matt at matt@hometree.ie for information about funding and investment opportunities. Thank you.