Carbon Markets are not what they seem…

Carbon Markets and Events.

So as many of you know by now I’m big on sustainable events. My hope is that the industry will begin to set new standards in areas such as waste management, energy usage and sourcing, and vendor supply chain. We need to drastically and urgently cut our emissions in this industry, and we can start making changes today to get there.

One of the strategies that is being talked about is carbon offsetting. Personally I think it’s complicated. It’s hard to know which offset program is trustworthy and will do what it really says it will. Plus there are a lot of variables that you have no control over once you purchase credits. “For instance, nearly 30 percent of offsets sold through California’s forest carbon offset program did not result in real climate benefits, according to a recent analysis by the nonprofit CarbonPlan. And hundreds of thousands of acres of trees that were planted and sold as offsets burned up in California and Oregon’s 2021 wildfires.” This stat is from Outside magazine’s 2/25/22 article by Nancy Averett.

Some music festivals are pledging to plant 1 tree for every attendee. But newly planted forests take a long time to sequestor the amount of carbon that an old forest has stored. I have also seen event organizers provide options to purchase credits online that go toward your trip. There is a risk that carbon offset schemes will start feeling like a permission slip to pollute.

Lastly, I believe that offset programs can and have taken advantage of communities that are struggling for sovereignty and autonomy. If you can find a thoroughly vetted and reliable carbon reduction program, then it must act as a small piece of your wider event strategy, which includes ALL of the things you could do at your live event to cut emissions.

Some alternatives or supplemental options:

Can you incentivize speakers to travel by train? Railway travel emissions are the lowest among the options (I’m not counting boats!). Taking the train from San Francisco to Boston might be out of the question for now, but if you have speakers within a couple hundred miles and there’s a train available, maybe this can be a solution.

Hybrid events. Beam in some of your speakers remotely. Encourage long-distance attendees to watch online. There’s lots of ways to do this so it’s not boring! And in fact I have written about this.

If you are purchasing credits, you must conduct due diligence to ensure the highest quality credits available. Here’s a guide, the Tropical Forest Credit Integrity Guide for Companies. This guide clearly explains the importance of transparency among carbon credit purchases in order to establish good-faith relationships with local and Indigenous communities. These credits must complement your ambitious work toward reducing emissions at your event.