CARBON NEUTRAL

In 2015, the international community signed a climate treaty called the Paris Climate Accords. 195 countries, including South Africa, signed the accord pledging to do everything in their governments’ powers to halt the increase in temperatures, and to in principle keep the total increase in average temperatures to less than 2ºC above the global average temperatures seen in pre-industrial times (c.1850). “Doing everything in a government’s power” is determined by a country's nationally determined contribution (NDCs); these are agreed commitments that all 195 countries will do to keep to the Paris commitments.

South Africa’s NDC
The South African government published an update to their first NDC in 2021. Countries are obliged to publish a review every 5 years. There are 5 goals, but in this article we will focus on the carbon inventory commitments. Table 2 of the update, gives the following information:

The progress on this is reasonable. South Africa is not far behind similar countries in their human development index band. The organisation that monitors a country’s progress on their Paris targets is called Climate Transparency and in 2021 they published a report showing that South Africa is making the later year reductions harder to meet with current levels way above target, but Our World in Data shows the annual emission in 2022 at 404 Mt CO2e. Which, from the table above, shows they are on track to meet their NDCs.

Net zero 2050
The NDCs given above are part of a larger commitment that national governments are striving to achieve. Many environmentalists encourage a commitment to a net zero carbon flux by 2050. In other words, the amount of carbon emitted by all human activity on earth, must be balanced by all carbon removed by all humans (carbon neutral).

Carbon neutral and net zero are terms used interchangeably, however newer net zero targets will not allow a company to off-set more than 10% of their emissions meaning that they have to reduce their emissions by 90% and then the remaining 10% can be off-set. Carbon neutral standards are less rigorous allowing a company to off-set any quantity of emission.

Off-setting
To fully decarbonise the human industrial system is not possible - many of the processes involve organic matter, organic fuels, or ingredients that have a CO2 equivalence (CO2e) that appears in the category of what is known as greenhouse gases (GHG). Processing or using these products will mean that at some point these CO2e gases will be released into the atmosphere. Gas exchange is not unnatural, especially in the carbon and nitrogen cycle, however if the CO2 release is more than what is taken up by carbon sinks then the levels of CO2 will increase - which is what scientists currently see.

In the Paris Accords it was heralded that all countries would reduce GHG emissions to a level where natural or human initiated sinks would “off-set” the emissions and the atmospheric CO2 increases would cease. The premise is that a stable CO2 level would stop global temperatures increasing. So, shortly after the Paris Accord was signed a number of organisations were created to start Carbon Trading.

Carbon Trading is done through organisations that act as brokers or are actually solution providers who sell certificates that represent a tonne of CO2e. In other words, for a fee, individuals or companies can buy a mechanism that will replace one tonne of carbon emission with one tonne of carbon capture resulting in a zero emission - these are popular when purchasing an airline ticket. These capture or sequestration methods are often focussed on reforestation initiatives, paying electricity providers to remove carbon emissions from their chimney outflows, or having a company inject carbon dioxide into absorbing rocks like basalt.

The practical manner in which the implementation of net-zero is not without major obstacles. Early in the quest for carbon neutrality the offset mechanisms were fraught with allegations of fraud and with schemes that were selling the same unit of carbon removal, or through the promise of reforestation that could have happened, never happened, or the trees planted died in great numbers.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a company that focusses on trying to standardise carbon accounting and to help analysts become more consistent in LCAs. The company defined three types of carbon emissions. Scope 1 to Scope 3 emissions are used to describe the move of responsibility of emissions, with Scope 1 being a company’s direct emission; through Scope 2 which are the emissions linked to energy production that a company uses; to Scope 3 which is the carbon emissions associated with suppliers of ingredients further upstream in the supply chain. Off-setting is typically used to cancel Scope 3 emissions and although the certificates exchange hands, the verification that the carbon uptake has taken place is hard to prove - hence the corruption.

In 2020, a typical carbon off-set would cost a company R600 per tonne of CO2e, a quick online search will now show that a tonne of CO2e can be bought for R110-155. So, the cost of off-setting has been the cause of its own demise. In a race for the bottom many of the off-set schemes are not financially viable and it means the projects to remove carbon fail easily or do not get done with full diligence. To ensure that the projects are viable the same tree can be sold several times.

The EU, through its Green Claims legislation will make company claims like “Carbon Neutral” illegal or if not impossible by 2026 - which could in essence ban carbon off-setting of Scope 3 emissions. Major fashion brands, like Kering, are focussing on in-setting which is carbon sink projects that take place within a company’s supply chain, especially farming. These types of activities are much easier to monitor, verify, and certify. In-setting will be harder to be corrupted because the value chain handles the certificates and more accountability for industry brokers can be exercised. Companies external to the supply chain have less to lose and can be created or cease to operate much more easily.

In the next issue: ISO 20200: 2023 - the main disintegration test method used to determine how leather will break down in compost has had a face-lift. In this article the discussion about why the changes and how the industry will benefit. Will the new ISO 20200 align with what is seen in industrial composting facilities or in the pilot scale test ISO 16929? 

I have also attached South Africa's NDC for your interest and Climate Transparency's report - quite unfair the way SA were audited in my opinion. 

Please see https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/south-africa#what-are-the-country-s-annual-co2-emissions for a more neutral representation of SA's emissions.