This week’s Digest is being written as the UK goes to the polls. It is perhaps fitting that our focus is on hot air. There is the Danish tax on cow belches and the warning that these will squeeze out regenerative farmers; new research on the importance (or not) of environmental impact when people buy meat and dairy; good news on science-based target setting, water risk disclosures and reusable packaging; plus the latest twist in the carbon offsetting tale.
Let’s start with SBTi (the Science-based targets initiative). The go-to verifier of corporate net-zero targets has been beset by bungling of late. For those who haven’t been following it all and want the background, it’s worth checking out Monday’s Net Zero Notebook. For those looking for a nutshell explanation: SBTi announced it was going to relax the rules and let corporates use more carbon offsets towards achieving their GHG emission reduction targets; staff revolted; SBTi relented and suggested it had been hasty and misunderstood.
Luiz Amaral, SBTi’s CEO, said to expect a draft of potential changes this month. But this week he resigned, citing personal reasons that “require my full attention at this time”. Amaral said he remained “steadfast in my belief in the importance, the impact, and the promising future of the SBTi”.
Indeed, the announcement came the day after an SBTi report boasted that the number of companies with science-based targets increased by 102% last year compared to all previous years. The SBTi monitoring report 2023 showed that companies setting targets in the food, beverage and agriculture sector had increased by more than 125% year-on-year; in hospitality the increase was around 120%.
Dark clouds continue to gather over the concept of carbon offsetting, though. Edie reported this week how more than 80 non-profits issued a joint statement warning that offsetting could delay climate action, “inherently lacks credibility” and will not solve the climate funding gap. On this topic, a blog by Mark Maslin, professor of natural sciences at UCL and a founding member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group (CCAG), is worth five minutes of our time – he offers five ways to restore trust in these controversial markets. “Carbon credits must never be seen as a primary strategy for achieving emissions targets, but rather as a supplementary measure, used only after a company has implemented all other possible reduction technologies and strategies,” he explained.
There are two main ways to create a carbon credit: projects that avoid emissions, such as energy efficiency and avoiding deforestation; and then there is removal and storage of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But where are all the carbon removal buyers, asked Bloomberg this week. “There are fundamental questions about carbon removal that society needs to answer,” Eric Toone, chief technology officer of Breakthrough Energy, told the site. “Does society want to pay $500 a ton[ne] to be absolutely certain I captured carbon and know exactly where it is? Or does it want to pay 10 cents a ton[ne] and hope for the best?”
Talk of the price of carbon brings us to news that Denmark is planning for a world-first carbon tax on agriculture by 2030 (New Zealand has delayed its plans for such a tax). Denmark’s tax will involve landowners paying a levy based on their emissions from livestock, fertiliser, forestry and the disturbance of carbon-rich agricultural soils. There will be tax breaks for “climate-efficient farmers”, reports the British Agriculture Bureau.
Revenues from the tax will be channelled back to the sector and reinvested into green initiatives, climate technology, and production transformation, targeting the agricultural sectors facing the most difficulty in transitioning. “It is my impression that there is a real interest in promoting climate-smart solutions and developing solutions that achieve real reductions in emissions,” professor Søren Petersen, a soil microbiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, told Carbon Brief this week.
But Peder Tuborgh, CEO at farmer-owned dairy cooperative Arla Foods, said voluntary measures are working just fine, and warned that the tax could have implications for organic farmers. “It is crucial for us that farmers who genuinely do everything they can to reduce their emissions are not subjected to a tax now or in the future,” he explained in a statement. “Therefore, it is essential that the tax base for a CO2 tax is solely based on emissions for which there are means to eliminate.”
Regenerative farmers in the UK have reacted with “dismay” to the news, according to 8point9.com. There is concern over the accuracy of data from on-farm emissions and what role carbon sequestration will play in any calculations of a tax. There is also continued – and increasing – concern from farming groups over the GWP100 carbon accounting metric. “As the tax only targets raw emissions and does not also account for carbon drawdown, there is a grave danger that the decision will drive greater intensification of livestock, as farmers seek to reduce emissions but continue to externalise other impacts, for example on welfare, biodiversity and natural systems,” the report warned.
Indeed, one of the priorities for the next government will be to better understand the rise in intensive meat and dairy farming here in the UK. The impact of these on natural ecosystems, for example rivers, is already a pressure point for policymakers. GHGs from agriculture must fall, but so too must nitrate pollution, phosphorous pollution and sediment pollution, noted Private Eye. There will be little rest at Defra for incoming ministers.
Our other stories this week include a study on consumer priorities when buying meat and dairy, improvements in water risk disclosures and the rollout of a scaled reuse model by Pernod Ricard.
