Research shows ethics are out of mind when people eat out of home, while the upset around offsets leads to new standards and concerns for the future of the Notebook. By David Burrows.
We are now into the thick of ‘climate season’. This busy period for campaigners, corporates and policymakers includes New York Climate Week, COP16 (biodiversity) and COP29 (climate), plus INC-5 (plastic). Such events provide “incredibly valuable moments in time to reassess what we’re contributing to the wider conversation on accelerating the transition to sustainable, regenerative food and farming”, according to Adele Jones, executive director at the Sustainable Food Trust.
One of the big themes in New York was financing the regenerative agricultural transition. Regular readers will appreciate that regenerative agriculture has become the approach de rigeur for food and drink companies looking to curb their scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and help restore nature. The movement has certainly brought hope, perhaps most so if it is agroecology (with a strong social dimension too) that is at the forefront. “Industrial agriculture, which is the dominant model of production, is based on war technologies, continues to kill millions of species and is driving the sixth mass extinction,” wrote the environmental activist and author Vandana Shiva recently. “Agroecology is the future,” she added.
It might well be. But what about the present? Organic is probably the best proxy we have for a better product that is grown or reared in systems that provide environmental and social benefits. “The wider adoption of organic farming practices will benefit the environment,” concluded academics in a rapid review for the Scottish Government in 2023. But try convincing consumers that it is four times better (the price difference between a conventional and organic chicken in the supermarket currently).
Will those externalities ever be internalised in a fairer food system? Again, we are forced to look at the future, not the present. Until then consumers are relied upon to pay the price, twice, if they buy ‘better’ food and drinks – once through taxes to subsidise the current industrial systems of farming and once through a premium for organic, high welfare, lower carbon or regenerative. They also have to decide what constitutes value for money within those schemes, and if that matches their own values. And that’s before they even start unpicking whether the claims on packs or on menus are legitimate.
So it’s no wonder that Deloitte’s fifth annual sustainable consumer survey (published in October) concludes that “a plateau has been reached in key areas for reducing emissions, such as fewer individuals taking sustainability into consideration when making purchases. There is also growing consumer fatigue and scepticism, with a higher proportion of consumers lacking interest in sustainability and believing that adopting a more sustainable lifestyle makes no difference,” the consultancy said.
OOH out of mind
Some 36% of the 2,000 polled UK adults would pay more for goods and services to ensure the brands that create them commit to environmentally sustainable or ethical practices; 34% meanwhile said no way. Almost half (45%) of consumers rely on businesses to offer sustainable products or services as standard, while making sustainable alternatives more affordable is cited by 53% of consumers as the main area for business to address. Which is all easy peasy. Not.
Deloitte’s research also shows a yawning gap in the behaviours of consumers when grocery shopping and when they’re eating out or having a takeaway. For example: 84% have reduced food waste and 70% have tried to limit the packaging in their grocery shopping habits; but only 35% and 21% respectively have done so when having takeaways or eating out. Far more people have also bought seasonal (89%) or local (74%) groceries than selecting these when dining out (18% and 28%).
The consumption of less meat and animal products is also more engrained in supermarket shopping (86% have done so). However, almost half (45%) of adults said they have cut back on animal products when eating out – which seems pretty significant. Less significant is the number purchasing carbon offsets: 18% have when grocery shopping, 6% when buying alcoholic drinks and 10% when eating out.
Offsets are a regular entry in the Notebook these days. Much is going on in this space since all those stories about dodgy carbon credits surfaced a year or so back. Big buyers of offsets have pulled out of the market, as they now focus on reducing their emissions (which is more effective but also more expensive). Has all the money invested previously in offsets been ring-fenced for such projects, we wonder?
New analysis by Bloomberg Green of 320,000 offset transactions shows demand for offsets declined sharply last year. “Among the offset purchases seeing the steepest declines are credits tied to renewable-energy projects, which fell 29%,” the report reads. “Most experts have written off these offsets as junk because electricity from wind, hydro and solar plants is already low cost. That suggests extra funding from the sale of the credits doesn’t contribute to further reduction in emissions.”
Which is concerning. These co-called “junk offsets” may well get a reprieve at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan, which kick off today: a UN-backed market for trading carbon offsets is being developed and will hopefully get the green light. If you hear people referring to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, that’s it. We will keep you posted on that once a decision has been made.
Offset upset
The debate around offsets and their value will continue regardless. “The potential beauty of voluntary carbon markets is that they can identify and fund low-cost mitigation actions that government regulation and taxes will miss,” wrote academics from Yale in 2021. However, the dark side, revealed by a series of exposés by The Guardian, among others, is that the market “did not lead to additional carbon being stored”, the scientists wrote, “but merely paid entities that were already committed to storing the carbon”.
As one of the authors, Robert Mendelsohn, told Carbon Brief more recently: “They [carbon offsets] have not changed behaviour and so they have not led to any reduction of carbon in the atmosphere…They have achieved zero mitigation.” Mendelsohn has argued that if carbon markets are going to become serious about helping address climate change, they must “move away from funding small, individual projects and toward paying entire companies to reduce emissions”.
This feels like a pretty big moment for offsets. The recent global stocktake highlights the urgent need for increased ambition to bridge the gap between current efforts and the emissions reductions required, said the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) in its pre-COP29 blog. “A high-integrity carbon market is a crucial tool to help close this gap. By mobilising investment that would not otherwise be available, it can channel much-needed private finance to the local level, supporting climate solutions, particularly in the Global South,” said the Council.
Some brands have already been pulling their funding closer to home, though. One bottled water brand we spoke to recently has diverted the money it previously used for carbon offsets overseas into water stewardship programmes here in the UK. This feels more “tangible” they said. They can even visit the projects (with customers and clients) to see the difference they are making. This has brought arguably “deeper conversations” about potential climate, nature and water solutions rather than just having a carbon neutral label, they explained.
The new neutral
Talk of offsets inevitably leads to carbon neutral claims. These seemed to be dead in the water not so long ago, at least in the UK and EU. However, a new whitepaper from Eight Versa, a sustainability consultancy based in London suggests the concept is “about to have a renaissance. Carbon neutral is now,” they write, and “by positioning carbon neutral as a crucial step towards net-zero. It offers organisations a credible and actionable path for immediate climate action while working towards long-term goals.”
The latest update of ISO14068, which supersedes the PAS2060 standard for carbon neutrality, is the game-changer, they said. “[…] we now have a reinvigorated, science-based, and now internationally-recognised standard”. BSI is equally gushing (unsurprisingly as a standards seller) of the new approach. “In an era where environmental consciousness is a key driver of consumer decisions, BS ISO 14068-1 emerges as a beacon guiding businesses towards genuine carbon neutrality and sustainable practices,” it notes in an explainer.
Eight Versa, which also has a vested interest in offsets through the Natural Carbon Solutions certification it has founded, claimed the new standard “provides organisations with a credible framework for making carbon neutral claims” and which can “revive the interest in carbon neutral certifications for both companies and products”.
Maybe. But the scandals are still fresh in the mind. Brands are already moving on to new claims and certifications. Rules are tightening around the claims that can be made. And consumers will be sceptical – especially if it’s still called ‘carbon neutral’. Perhaps ‘near-term net-zero’ could be an option? (we are joking, of course).
Get real-zero
This brings us to our final point, which raises the question of whether this will be the final Net-zero Notebook. Because there is a new term in town: real zero. “Net-zero has moved away from its original definition of substantially reducing fossil fuel use, to mean continuing to burn fossil fuels but claiming to ‘offset’ the emissions,” said the Lethal Humidity Global Council in an open letterpublished at the end of last month. Scientists from nine countries including the UK have signed the pledge.
The Council, which is convened by the Minderoo Foundation, said net-zero targets use “carbon credits, offsets, unproven technologies like carbon capture and storage and over-inflated estimates of natural carbon sinks […] to create the appearance of reduced emissions without meaningful changes to business practices”.
Real-zero, on the other hand, refers to “the complete elimination of all greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels”. Companies are already finding net-zero hard enough: nearly two years after the UN Secretary General’s Integrity Matters report clarified what ‘good net zero’ looks like, the world’s businesses have made “very limited progress in enhancing the credibility of their targets”, according to the Net Zero Tracker update in September.
Real-zero is billed as being far harder than net-zero. Harder still will be coming up with a new name for this column if it catches on.
