It was recently brought to my attention that CarbonCure sells its carbon sequestration as a carbon offset to third parties.
That means when we use CarbonCure on a project, the carbon savings of that technology does not actually get retired with the building… it goes on to be retired by a third party that purchase it as an offset from CarbonCure.
This to me causes a major discrepency in carbon accounting. If we document the carbon sequestration from CarbonCure in our whole building LCA and then that carbon sequestration is sold to a third party, it is technology double counted.
How is the CLF community approaching this? I have started to alert our clients about this as I do not want them to get caught in a greenwashing scandal.
It seems this would be double counting then and we can’t include sequestration in the LCA, it is not clear if they are also selling the emissions reduction from lowering the cement content of the mix.
@ScottFarbman digging this post back up as I just saw Solida will be selling offsets as well. So it seems this will only continue to be an issue in the future!
This definitely is an issue with the voluntary carbon offset market. To play devil’s advocate - for the time being, there is no one counting all the carbon in the world. We’re undercounting some and double counting others, so the math is questionable before we start adding in offsets. So if I have to make an argument to take a bit of heat off this issue, this will provide more funding for early ultra low carbon and carbon sequestering products during the early phase of their life. Hopefully this will get them off the ground and cost competitive during the start up phase, and when public literacy is high enough that we’re all calling out the claims, they can stand on their own as a cost neutral better option. From what I’ve seen, most companies selling low carbon alternatives that are sold as offsets as well will be transparent, but cagey about admitting what this does to the LCA. It’s dishonest, but it still is a lower carbon option, and those buying offsets probably wouldn’t be doing anything more to address their carbon emissions anyway until we have a legal, controlled cap and trade market.
The general mindset here at the office is that any claim relying on offsets isn’t a valid claim. And yet we still buy offsets to “mitigate” our firm’s operational emissions as a form of climate penance…
@jschwartzhoff - I like your devil’s advocate position, and I think it plays. Without this financial mechanism, these technologies will never get off the ground. It is still a win in the end, because we are getting lower carbon concretes and other materials. The offset component is really only a murky accounting situation on the LCA side.
So then… If I’m reading between the lines… with your LCAs, for example - you are indeed taking credit for Carbon Cure’s sequestration at the building level, despite that sequestration being accounted for elsewhere through a 3rd party offset.
I am sort of leaning this direction, though warning the client that this is technically being counted elsewhere.
My understanding is that the GHG Protocol allows for this in Scope 3 reporting. ‘Any purchased, sold or banked offsets relevant to the inventory results are subject to the same reporting requirements as defined in the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard in Chapter 13 and therefore are reported separately from the inventory results.’
I recommend utilizing these protocols that have existing frameworks for counting sold offsets separately, and not as part of the total LCA.
We haven’t had a project use carbon cure yet. We’ve been relying on getting high scm mixes that are (on average) 30% below the NRMCA regional average, which has been relatively easy for most of our projects - my personal guess is that the regions are large and working in more metropolitan areas gives us a leg up on the larger regions, so the baseline is (as always) questionable.
However, we did have a project where Aureus Earth was testing out selling offsets for the construction of mass timber buildings. My understanding is that the narrative was that this was a pilot project to prove the funding mechanism and not considered a proper offset. I was only involved in the LCAs which we were doing for our own internal discussions, and in this case, we did take credit for using mass timber.
The accounting side is murky. For our internal numbers, I think we can and should count the reductions in our LCAs - we’re designing using lower carbon materials and if we want to enact actual change in our designs, we should aim for the lowest carbon options. We’re also doing this just to judge our work against ourselves, not to report officially. In a related discussion, I was just asked about Nucor’s EPD including lower emissions through a PPA agreement. in this case, the EPD includes both with the PPA offset and without. In a case like this, I’d take the non-offset numbers. Good for Nucor to pay extra to (hopefully) improve the carbon numbers in the world. But for us, we’re selecting rebar with real world impacts that will happen regardless of the PPA.
For our clients, I’d caution against taking credit for materials that have sold their offsets. They’ve gotten some sort of financial benefit for selling off the carbon credits (lower cost of construction), and especially if this ties into GHG reporting, they should not be allowed to take credit for the sold carbon. As @lindseyengh mentioned - there are protocols for scope 3 reporting on this, and they should be followed.
My argument for the devils advocate side is only to say that in the wild west of voluntary reporting, I’m ok with these companies trying to prop up a revenue stream as long as they are transparent about it. I expect this to be a short lived loop hole as carbon literacy grows.
I absolutely agree re utilizing local market SCM’s in lieu of products like Carbon Cure. That supports local resource extraction and helps grow local markets too.
I also deal with this a lot on the offsets purchased side. ie: carpet companies, Nucor are two that rely on purchasing carbon offsets for their ‘carbon neutral’ product (although I believe that Econiq relies on renewable energy purchasing, which makes more sense for a steel product). I agree with Justin re: it’s becoming more common to see a variety of carbon offsets (bought, sold, etc) in the wild west of voluntary reporting.
However, there are frameworks for Scope 3 emission reporting and target setting (Science Based Targets). Adoption and utilization of these frameworks helps push the industry from voluntary to mandatory reporting practices.
I don’t have much more to add here. Justin your point about clients getting lower cost of construction is an excellent one if there is push back about not being able to take environmental credit for the sequestration.
I’m quickly approaching this same very topic on my own home, as we are about to put on a PV array. The state (IL) is paying us RECs for the first 15 years of operation. It sucks, but we do not get access to the environmental benefit of our renewable energy generation (I actually had to sign a contract saying that there could be legal ramifications if we say otherwise!). Alas… I’m still subject to the dirty ComEd grid emissions rates
