China Says the Winter Olympics Are Carbon Neutral. They Aren't
Beijing Winter Olympics’ claim to 'carbon neutrality' is based on junk offsets that do little or nothing to counteract emissions.
(Bloomberg) -- The Beijing Winter Olympics’ claim to “carbon neutrality” is based on junk offsets that do little or nothing to counteract the emissions of the games, making the assertion little more than marketing.
“We have a shrinking window of time to substantially rein in our emissions,” said Barbara Haya, research fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. Offsets allow all kinds of organizations to “claim to be decarbonizing when they're just paying for business-as-usual,” she added.
To back its carbon-neutral claim, BOCOG secured 1.7 million offset credits, each of which is supposed to neutralize the impact of one ton of CO₂ emissions. BOCOG estimates the games’ total carbon footprint is about 1.3 million tons of CO₂. Offsets, if they worked well, would more than compensate for the climate impact. But the climate math doesn’t add up.
Some 1.1 million credits are linked to tree-planting projects across China, according to the committee’s marketing materials. Tree-planting projects are limited in their ability to be carbon sinks. At best, they store carbon temporarily, which doesn’t compensate for the burning of permanent stores of carbon, aka fossil fuels.
BOCOG sourced the remaining 600,000 offset credits from the Clean Development Mechanism, a program of the United Nations. A European Commission-backed study found the program to have “fundamental flaws in terms of overall environmental integrity.” A closer look shows why.
The Beijing Olympic committee didn’t disclose the details of its 600,000 CDM credits, but according to public data reviewed by Bloomberg, at least 200,000 are linked to a mammoth wind farm in northeast China, close to the North Korea border. With 33 giant turbines, the Guoshuitou Diaobingshan Quanyangou Wind Power Project issues offsets under the theory that its renewable electricity replaces that from dirty coal-fired power plants and voilà: fewer emissions.
Of all CDM projects, large-scale old wind farms are likely among the worst. The issue hinges on a technical concept known as “additionality.” Offset project developers have to make the case that, without the money from the sale of offsets, there would be no reduction in emissions from a pre-determined baseline. If that’s true, then each ton of CO₂ can be sold as an offset on the carbon market.
It’s an extremely tricky concept and prone to abuse. “Oversight is not stringent and there are many loopholes,” said Jürg Füssler, who was a member of the UN CDM methodologies board until 2012. “Offset projects tied to wind haven't been additional for a long time.”
The two main offsetting programs, Verra and Gold Standard, no longer accept grid-connected wind projects for this reason, with an exception for least-developed countries.
BOCOG has taken many other steps that reduced the games’ carbon impact, including securing renewable power, reusing old venues, and using electric vehicles. In response to questions about the carbon-neutral claim, the committee directed Bloomberg to its green marketing materials.
But the carbon-neutral claim falls short, said Gilles Dufrasne, policy officer at non-profit Carbon Market Watch. “Buying such credits amounts to giving money to a project that would have happened anyway. It does nothing to help the climate crisis,” he said. “This definitely does not make the Olympics carbon neutral.”
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