EU: Don't let big polluters off the hook. Say no to carbon offsets!

To: The European Parliament and Council

“Stop certifying CO2 offsets – it’s time for genuine change to reduce CO2 emissions quickly!”

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What is the CRCF?

The European Commission submitted a legislative proposal in November 2022 to the European Parliament and the Council to establish a carbon removal certification framework (CRCF) for the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of removals. This is part of the European Climate Law (aiming to reach net zero by 2050). It would set up a regulatory process that provides government sanction and market confidence for removal offset credits to be sold in voluntary, and eventually compliance (i.e. mandatory), carbon markets. The objective is to provide incentives for more carbon removals across the EU and beyond.

Both so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ and technofixes fall under the proposed certification scheme. 

The CRCF risks:

• enabling the continuation of the fossil economy by justifying new fossil fuel infrastructure
• legitimizing and promoting global voluntary and compliance offset markets
• enabling big agriculture and timber sectors to undermine biodiversity restoration, land rights and food sovereignty
• misleading citizens, delaying real climate action and making it more likely that we will  overshoot the critical 1.5°C limit.

The problem with ‘nature-based solutions’ 

The fallacy of land-based removals, or ‘nature-based solutions’ has been exposed on numerous occasions. Recent investigations have confirmed what the science was already pointing out: offsets are not an alternative to emissions reductions. The scandal around the US organization Verra, which certifies carbon emissions reductions under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), uncovered that more than 90% of the carbon certifier’s rainforest offsets were worthless. This is because temporary ‘nature-based’ sequestration is not interchangeable with and cannot compensate for fossil emissions that stay in the atmosphere and contribute to warming for hundreds to thousands of years.

Other investigations show how easily major carbon market actors can exaggerate climate claims or inflate baselines by creating a false sense of deforestation risks. In addition, these land-based offsets have been linked to land grabs and human rights abuses, first and foremost impacting communities in the Global South, Indigenous peoples and small peasant farmers. To name just one example, a study found that a soil carbon project in Kenya not only overestimated the amount of carbon emissions saved, it also resulted in the grabbing of Indigenous peoples’ land and the erasure of their ancestral practices.

The problem with technofixes

Geoengineering, or technofixes, are fossil fuel industry attempts to come up with technologies that could remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They include processes such as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (or BECCS) and Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (or DACCS)

The first problem with these technofixes is that they are unproven: There are presently no ‘negative emissions’ technologies that work or are viable at scale.

In addition, these processes come with disproportionate economic, social and environmental costs and risks. The proposed technologies are extremely expensive and require a huge amount of resources such as water and land that are increasingly scarce, therefore threatening biodiversity and food sovereignty across the world. They pose enormous risks to our communities, including upholding human and Indigenous rights.

Real Zero

Europe has a huge historical responsibility toward the Global South to support a just transition and to rapidly bring emissions down to Real Zero at home. We know what Real Zero looks like: a just and equitably managed phase-out of fossil fuels; an energy transformation to real, fair, democratic and sustainable renewable energy that prioritizes well-being over economic growth; support for small-scale farmers and a just transition of food and agricultural systems toward agroecology for food sovereignty; close-to-nature forestry; and the redirection of public subsidies away from fossil fuels to support these measures.

Getting to Real Zero and staying below 1.5°C of warming requires rejecting any European Commission proposal for certifying carbon removal offsets in a failed carbon market. It requires halting emissions and restoring ecosystems now.

More than 200 climate, environmental, economic justice, human rights and food sovereignty organizations from around the globe support Real Zero Europe. Together they aim to campaign to scrap the European Commission’s carbon removal certification law, to resist Europe’s ‘net zero’ false solutions, and to apply pressure on the EU and European nations to take action now toward real, deep emissions cuts.

For more information see www.realsolutions-not-netzero.org

We call on EU decision-makers to firmly reject the offset approach. True zero is urgently needed and big emitters must not be given a get-out-of-jail card. Keeping our planet’s climate within a relatively safer degree of warming requires real, just, and immediate reductions. A strategy to overshoot 1.5°C and then achieve temporary removals through currently non-existent technologies is a strategy that will lead to climate disaster.

To: The European Parliament and Council

Dear Members of the European Parliament and Representatives of the Council,

Climate change is accelerating into irreversible climate chaos, making the need for a radical, equitable and just transformation of our economies more pressing than ever. There is no time to waste, and there are no more dead ends we can revisit. 

We therefore urge you to reject any European Commission proposal for certifying carbon removal offsets on the grounds that the carbon market has failed. 

Offsetting has proven to be a dangerous misstep on the path to emission reductions and a zero-carbon economy. It can be seen as a get-out-of-jail card for big polluters, regardless of whether it is “nature-based solutions” that ignore social and environmental concerns and can't guarantee long-term carbon storage, or future technological removals that are unproven and pose unacceptable threats to our communities and ecosystems. 

Scientists have pointed out the dangers inherent in offsetting numerous times, yet the EU is currently discussing a law to certify carbon removals and create credits that could be traded in carbon offset markets. This would allow companies to deny responsibility for past emissions and continue fueling the climate crisis, while enabling financiers to gamble with climate chaos in the name of speculative profits.

We, the undersigned, ask you to firmly reject offsetting in EU policy. It’s time to put an end to the distraction and destruction of “carbon removal technologies” and “nature-based solutions”. It’s time to accept that our house is on fire. It’s time for absolute emissions reductions. It’s time for Real Zero.

Yours faithfully,