Thanks for tackling this, and for making me feel a little less ignorant. It's definitely challenging -- not just trying to understand it all myself, but also figure out what's going to be the biggest "selling points" for the decision makers who we hope will implement Green Development Standards in Waterloo Region.
In my view, each company should only count emissions of scope 1 and 2. Scope 3 is a mess and there is a risk of double counting... (how to control the boundaries?). As Nate Hagens says, there is no other way to cut emissions but changing our consumption behaviour, it is all about each one of us.
"This is what we need- a label for every material and every product made by every company, right up the value chain."
I think the problem there is that vendors would lie. After all, stating a lower figure will give you an advantage over a competitor who tells the truth. Some time ago I was dealing with an order when the supplier ask me "what value do you want on the invoice that Customes sees?" Of Course, tax is calculated on that declared value. They seemed genuinely surprised when I wanted the real value not one 1/2 the actual value. They acted as if nobody had ever said that to them before.
With no way to validate the value on that label I am afraid it would be useless.
One of my seminar leaders at the US Naval War College had a recurring theme about how humans organize information with the driving point being that there is no single correct way to organize knowledge and information but whatever way you choose will impact how you think about that information and what you do with it.
I agree with you that it's not O&G companies that are totally to blame. For me, this seems like a form of scapegoating that rich consumers use to shift the responsibility away from themselves.
Another solution to scope 3 emissions could be mandatory offsetting for the carbon emissions, upfront--for every ton of carbon produced by O&G, they have to pay to take a ton out. You could do this on the free market, so it would create jobs and innovation. And, because many new businesses would be formed around carbon sequestration techniques, innovation would go up and costs of offsetting would go down. The O&G companies would pass on the cost of the offsets to the consumer, so the higher prices would also lower consumption. Eventually, if clean energy is viable, it would become cheaper than O&G. This would need to be done globally. Right now, this isn't possible, but perhaps in the future...
Interesting concept. This would be embedding a carbon tax-equivalent for scope 3 into the production cost. Hard to implement in a global economy though. Certification schemes such as for paper from sustainably managed forests are also being tried (Equitable Origin) for natural gas with limited success. It remains a tough nut to crack!
I think the idea of a label is a great idea....and then, people can be responsible for what they use. But, I'm sure that will not happen. Thank you for taking the time to unpack this for us.
This is, as you note, especially problematic for manufacturers (as opposed to other types of companies). Their supply chain of materials and parts really belongs in Scope 1, not 3, or at least in a category separate from 3. This would be in keeping with the difference between operating energy and embodied carbon/energy, with the latter having the subcategory of upfront carbon (thanks in great part to you). So the current Scope 3 needs to be broken down into categories that are part of the business operations and categories that are part of the supply chain that results in the end product the manufacturer sells. I would argue that we need at least 4 scopes:
1. as currently described
2. parts of Scope 2 that are in the manufacturer's supply chain
3. the rest of the current Scope 2
4. Currently Scope 3
And then, if we really want to look at this in terms of circularity, the end of life of the product should be separated from the rest of the current Scope 3, something like a Scope2A, especially as Extended Producer Responsibility comes into play.
This would more closely resemble the modules of the WBG's Whole Life Carbon divisions for products and buildings.
I know, I know, I just made it look more complicated by changing it to 4 or 5 scopes, but I think it makes more sense in terms of our goals.
In the early 80’s Carl Sagan testified on climate and emissions in the US congress, and he also used similarly clear consistently user friendly language to explain the nuances to an often dismissive audience. Upfront emissions should be everyone’s first consideration when purchasing a new product but money and materials are not the only issues now, it’s time to upfront Human Resources. We are all startups made up of stardust.
I appreciated Lloyd's article, "Stop Blaming 57 Companies...," when it came out. I think that people prefer to blame "corporations" rather than their own decisions and habits.
Speaking of Scope 3 emissions, I wonder if Lloyd tallies up his emissions from flying? He could do this for the past decade and then take a deep look at what to do, such as offsetting.
I have a friend who works at a major gov't institution tasked with solving climate problems. They refuse to look at their own Scope 3 emissions, such as from business flying, despite their claims of carbon reduction.
Yes, getting accurate labels on products about emissions, and thus accurate information, is important, but that task will take a lot of change to occur. It's hard to track this in open societies, let alone in places like China where even basic emissions info is suspect, given their system.
I do tally my flying and it is awful, and about to get worse. Some in the building world talk about counting "avoided emissions" or how much carbon they save by not building in concrete. I am thinking of an avoided emissions strategy where I will promise not to eat 760 hamburgers to avoid the emissions of my 3.8 tonne round trip to New Zealand.
Thanks for your reply. There's also the possibility that high-altitude emissions create more heat than ground-level ones (the UK has estimated 2X).
I would be skeptical that it takes 4 tons of carbon to make 760 hamburgers. These figures are still rudimentary. It's conceivable that it would take 1000s of burgers to make up for that, especially if those cows were raised in a low-carbon manner.
I know you're resistant to offsetting, so no point in arguing. But I do think that offsetting could be a form of taking personal responsibility.
One of the numerous problems with offsetting is that people who do that actually think it makes a difference. it doesn't.
I looked into offsetting some time ago and came to the conclusion that 95% of the schemes are scams that simply make no difference to anything. Even the method used to calculate the carbon released per person on a flight is clearly deeply broken.
Offsetting has been an accounting scam to allow companies like Microsoft and Google to sidestep true reduction in their carbon emissions. It's neither honest nor effective.
There are offsets that work well enough--funds that go toward rebuilding ecological systems that also draw down carbon. To give some resources back to nature, such as when flying a lot, is far better than a person "freeloading" on the global atmosphere, especially while constantly wailing about climate change, such as Lloyd.
A tip: learn to distinguish between your personal opinion and real evidence.
I was being facetious about the hamburgers, as I often complain about the silliness of "avoided emissions." If you have recommendations for offsets that really work I would look at them seriously.
You could check out personal offsets that have been verified by a third party--there are lots of these. Just pick ones for which you like the work they do.
Another option is just to "pay back" the costs that your emissions are incurring. Currently, the EPA estimates that a ton of carbon might have total costs of around $100 (this is called the Social Cost of Carbon). So, if your NZ trip takes 3.5 tons, then "pay back" $350 to causes that are healing the environment, to make up for the damages that your carbon might cause.
The important thing is to do something rather than nothing. This could build your integrity and inner strength, and it will become easier over time.
Nope - none - zilch. The evidence shows that there are plenty of feel-good projects that look OK but in fact contribute nothing meaningful to the CO2 issue. The Evidence, for those who chose to see it suggests that the majority are actually investment scams intending to take the gullible for a ride.
In reality people need to travel, the reason why is unimportant, so people will travel. With regards to air travel, it is one of the smaller contributors to carbon emissions (2-3% for unavoidable travel) and in many cases there are no reasonable alternatives.
tip: learn to identify investment scams from real schemes.
Heres one example: In his book Regeneration, Paul Hawken gives some good examples of working offsets. For instance: "The Southern Cardamom Forest lies in southwest Cambodia and covers 1.24 million acres of relatively intact tropical forest. Offset payments fund rangers, who confiscate over fifteen hundred chain saws a year from illegal loggers. It is home to more than fifty endangered species, including the Asian forest elephant, clouded leopard, pileated gibbon, Siamese crocodile, and sun bear. Offsets prevent 110 million tones of carbon emissions and support the local communities in tenure registration, scholarship funding for higher education, and ecotourism projects."
Here's another from the same book: "According to Gold Standard, an offset verification nonprofit founded by the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations in 2003, the Sodo/Humbo project will sequester an estimated 1.1 million tons of carbon dioxide. The cost to a buyer? Eighteen dollars per ton."
Again, learn to recognize when you're just pontificating an opinion. There are third-party offset verification organizations, and major governments have accepted offsetting as well. Just because there might some issues here in the beginning doesn't mean we can't get the science and the practice of carbon drawdown to work, which is what we need to do.
As I mentioned, it's probable (still awaiting the science) that high-altitude emissions have more climate effects. Our World in Data cites a study that plane emissions have accounted for 4% of emissions. Likewise, only 10% of the world's people use planes in any one year. And, because of its carbon intensity, flying is generally a big chunk of an individual's carbon usage.
I agree with you that people will need to travel. Thus, as the globe modernizes, plane emissions will go way up. It seems to me that there is no choice but for us to learn how to draw down carbon emissions, and also agree to pay for our own. The early adopters will help drive the change.
>>"There are offsets that work well enough--funds that go toward rebuilding ecological systems that also draw down carbon."
The problem is that if I plant an oak or redwood to do long-term carbon capture, it won't be doing a meaningful reduction for decades to centuries. So while noble in itself to spend money towards rebuilding ecological systems, the idea that they will replace the carbon lost due to human disruption on an immediate or even decadal time frame is misguided at best. The accounting portion would be a nightmare; do you base offsets on the type of tree. or its current mass, or *potential* mass? How would you account for loss in a wildfire or other natural disaster?
Personally I don't think the government should be involved in trying to fix anything about the carbon issue when it's so bad at appropriating tax monies now. It's only going to get worse over time, not better.
We're already able to measure the amount of carbon stored in land and ocean systems, apparently. So, it would seem that, putting much attention into it, we could make this more granular.
Genuine question to answer—if an airline tallies Scope 1 emissions on the production of the aircraft they fly, then where would their purchase of fuel fall under? It would, and should, be Scope 1, right?
So why then, as a flyer, would I need to qualify *MY* flights as Scope 3? That would be double-counting the same fuel emissions that the airline itself is burning.
No wonder there are such problems with Scope 3 emissions—it lends itself to double counting and confusing total carbon emissions rather than the consumption of energy itself.
Good question. I suspect the answer is that it does not matter where it is accounted for, either stage 1 or stage 3, just as long as it is accounted for just once at some point.
Of course, this again leaves a major problem in that it allows the stage 1 people to say it should be accounted for at stage 3 and vice a versa.
They don't currently pay for scope 3 emissions. No company or gov't does that I'm aware of. Thus, to get ahead of the game, buy your own personal offsets till the world catches up in ethics. It's the only option right now, if you're a heavy carbon user.
They don't currently pay for scope 3 emissions. No company or gov't does. Thus, to get ahead of the game, buy your own personal offsets till the world catches up.
Thanks for tackling this, and for making me feel a little less ignorant. It's definitely challenging -- not just trying to understand it all myself, but also figure out what's going to be the biggest "selling points" for the decision makers who we hope will implement Green Development Standards in Waterloo Region.
In my view, each company should only count emissions of scope 1 and 2. Scope 3 is a mess and there is a risk of double counting... (how to control the boundaries?). As Nate Hagens says, there is no other way to cut emissions but changing our consumption behaviour, it is all about each one of us.
"This is what we need- a label for every material and every product made by every company, right up the value chain."
I think the problem there is that vendors would lie. After all, stating a lower figure will give you an advantage over a competitor who tells the truth. Some time ago I was dealing with an order when the supplier ask me "what value do you want on the invoice that Customes sees?" Of Course, tax is calculated on that declared value. They seemed genuinely surprised when I wanted the real value not one 1/2 the actual value. They acted as if nobody had ever said that to them before.
With no way to validate the value on that label I am afraid it would be useless.
One of my seminar leaders at the US Naval War College had a recurring theme about how humans organize information with the driving point being that there is no single correct way to organize knowledge and information but whatever way you choose will impact how you think about that information and what you do with it.
If every company reported their own scope 1 and 2 emissions, credible labeling might be possible. I, too, have been trying to tackle the scope 3 emissions challenge. See my own post here for the “and” I think is needed from oil and gas companies: https://stewardingenergy.com/2024/06/24/energy-shift-the-and-needed-from-og-companies/
Would be interested in hearing comments.
I agree with you that it's not O&G companies that are totally to blame. For me, this seems like a form of scapegoating that rich consumers use to shift the responsibility away from themselves.
Another solution to scope 3 emissions could be mandatory offsetting for the carbon emissions, upfront--for every ton of carbon produced by O&G, they have to pay to take a ton out. You could do this on the free market, so it would create jobs and innovation. And, because many new businesses would be formed around carbon sequestration techniques, innovation would go up and costs of offsetting would go down. The O&G companies would pass on the cost of the offsets to the consumer, so the higher prices would also lower consumption. Eventually, if clean energy is viable, it would become cheaper than O&G. This would need to be done globally. Right now, this isn't possible, but perhaps in the future...
Interesting concept. This would be embedding a carbon tax-equivalent for scope 3 into the production cost. Hard to implement in a global economy though. Certification schemes such as for paper from sustainably managed forests are also being tried (Equitable Origin) for natural gas with limited success. It remains a tough nut to crack!
I think the idea of a label is a great idea....and then, people can be responsible for what they use. But, I'm sure that will not happen. Thank you for taking the time to unpack this for us.
This is, as you note, especially problematic for manufacturers (as opposed to other types of companies). Their supply chain of materials and parts really belongs in Scope 1, not 3, or at least in a category separate from 3. This would be in keeping with the difference between operating energy and embodied carbon/energy, with the latter having the subcategory of upfront carbon (thanks in great part to you). So the current Scope 3 needs to be broken down into categories that are part of the business operations and categories that are part of the supply chain that results in the end product the manufacturer sells. I would argue that we need at least 4 scopes:
1. as currently described
2. parts of Scope 2 that are in the manufacturer's supply chain
3. the rest of the current Scope 2
4. Currently Scope 3
And then, if we really want to look at this in terms of circularity, the end of life of the product should be separated from the rest of the current Scope 3, something like a Scope2A, especially as Extended Producer Responsibility comes into play.
This would more closely resemble the modules of the WBG's Whole Life Carbon divisions for products and buildings.
I know, I know, I just made it look more complicated by changing it to 4 or 5 scopes, but I think it makes more sense in terms of our goals.
In the early 80’s Carl Sagan testified on climate and emissions in the US congress, and he also used similarly clear consistently user friendly language to explain the nuances to an often dismissive audience. Upfront emissions should be everyone’s first consideration when purchasing a new product but money and materials are not the only issues now, it’s time to upfront Human Resources. We are all startups made up of stardust.
I appreciated Lloyd's article, "Stop Blaming 57 Companies...," when it came out. I think that people prefer to blame "corporations" rather than their own decisions and habits.
Speaking of Scope 3 emissions, I wonder if Lloyd tallies up his emissions from flying? He could do this for the past decade and then take a deep look at what to do, such as offsetting.
I have a friend who works at a major gov't institution tasked with solving climate problems. They refuse to look at their own Scope 3 emissions, such as from business flying, despite their claims of carbon reduction.
Yes, getting accurate labels on products about emissions, and thus accurate information, is important, but that task will take a lot of change to occur. It's hard to track this in open societies, let alone in places like China where even basic emissions info is suspect, given their system.
I do tally my flying and it is awful, and about to get worse. Some in the building world talk about counting "avoided emissions" or how much carbon they save by not building in concrete. I am thinking of an avoided emissions strategy where I will promise not to eat 760 hamburgers to avoid the emissions of my 3.8 tonne round trip to New Zealand.
Hi Lloyd - are you coming to my country!
Depends, I have never known what your country is! but if it is New Zealand or Australia, yes I am coming in September and would love to meet.
yes of course you are in Aukland I will be there.
Oh, I thought you knew I was in NZ from the TreeHugger days, if you are in Auckland first beer is on me then!
Are you coming to a conference or something?
passive house conference in Wellington and then touring around the branches including Auckland. I forget a lot these days
Cool - which conference is it open to the likes of me?
Regards
Thanks for your reply. There's also the possibility that high-altitude emissions create more heat than ground-level ones (the UK has estimated 2X).
I would be skeptical that it takes 4 tons of carbon to make 760 hamburgers. These figures are still rudimentary. It's conceivable that it would take 1000s of burgers to make up for that, especially if those cows were raised in a low-carbon manner.
I know you're resistant to offsetting, so no point in arguing. But I do think that offsetting could be a form of taking personal responsibility.
One of the numerous problems with offsetting is that people who do that actually think it makes a difference. it doesn't.
I looked into offsetting some time ago and came to the conclusion that 95% of the schemes are scams that simply make no difference to anything. Even the method used to calculate the carbon released per person on a flight is clearly deeply broken.
Offsetting has been an accounting scam to allow companies like Microsoft and Google to sidestep true reduction in their carbon emissions. It's neither honest nor effective.
There are offsets that work well enough--funds that go toward rebuilding ecological systems that also draw down carbon. To give some resources back to nature, such as when flying a lot, is far better than a person "freeloading" on the global atmosphere, especially while constantly wailing about climate change, such as Lloyd.
A tip: learn to distinguish between your personal opinion and real evidence.
I was being facetious about the hamburgers, as I often complain about the silliness of "avoided emissions." If you have recommendations for offsets that really work I would look at them seriously.
You could check out personal offsets that have been verified by a third party--there are lots of these. Just pick ones for which you like the work they do.
Another option is just to "pay back" the costs that your emissions are incurring. Currently, the EPA estimates that a ton of carbon might have total costs of around $100 (this is called the Social Cost of Carbon). So, if your NZ trip takes 3.5 tons, then "pay back" $350 to causes that are healing the environment, to make up for the damages that your carbon might cause.
The important thing is to do something rather than nothing. This could build your integrity and inner strength, and it will become easier over time.
"There are offsets that work well enough"
Nope - none - zilch. The evidence shows that there are plenty of feel-good projects that look OK but in fact contribute nothing meaningful to the CO2 issue. The Evidence, for those who chose to see it suggests that the majority are actually investment scams intending to take the gullible for a ride.
In reality people need to travel, the reason why is unimportant, so people will travel. With regards to air travel, it is one of the smaller contributors to carbon emissions (2-3% for unavoidable travel) and in many cases there are no reasonable alternatives.
tip: learn to identify investment scams from real schemes.
Heres one example: In his book Regeneration, Paul Hawken gives some good examples of working offsets. For instance: "The Southern Cardamom Forest lies in southwest Cambodia and covers 1.24 million acres of relatively intact tropical forest. Offset payments fund rangers, who confiscate over fifteen hundred chain saws a year from illegal loggers. It is home to more than fifty endangered species, including the Asian forest elephant, clouded leopard, pileated gibbon, Siamese crocodile, and sun bear. Offsets prevent 110 million tones of carbon emissions and support the local communities in tenure registration, scholarship funding for higher education, and ecotourism projects."
Here's another from the same book: "According to Gold Standard, an offset verification nonprofit founded by the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations in 2003, the Sodo/Humbo project will sequester an estimated 1.1 million tons of carbon dioxide. The cost to a buyer? Eighteen dollars per ton."
Again, learn to recognize when you're just pontificating an opinion. There are third-party offset verification organizations, and major governments have accepted offsetting as well. Just because there might some issues here in the beginning doesn't mean we can't get the science and the practice of carbon drawdown to work, which is what we need to do.
As I mentioned, it's probable (still awaiting the science) that high-altitude emissions have more climate effects. Our World in Data cites a study that plane emissions have accounted for 4% of emissions. Likewise, only 10% of the world's people use planes in any one year. And, because of its carbon intensity, flying is generally a big chunk of an individual's carbon usage.
I agree with you that people will need to travel. Thus, as the globe modernizes, plane emissions will go way up. It seems to me that there is no choice but for us to learn how to draw down carbon emissions, and also agree to pay for our own. The early adopters will help drive the change.
>>"There are offsets that work well enough--funds that go toward rebuilding ecological systems that also draw down carbon."
The problem is that if I plant an oak or redwood to do long-term carbon capture, it won't be doing a meaningful reduction for decades to centuries. So while noble in itself to spend money towards rebuilding ecological systems, the idea that they will replace the carbon lost due to human disruption on an immediate or even decadal time frame is misguided at best. The accounting portion would be a nightmare; do you base offsets on the type of tree. or its current mass, or *potential* mass? How would you account for loss in a wildfire or other natural disaster?
Personally I don't think the government should be involved in trying to fix anything about the carbon issue when it's so bad at appropriating tax monies now. It's only going to get worse over time, not better.
We're already able to measure the amount of carbon stored in land and ocean systems, apparently. So, it would seem that, putting much attention into it, we could make this more granular.
Genuine question to answer—if an airline tallies Scope 1 emissions on the production of the aircraft they fly, then where would their purchase of fuel fall under? It would, and should, be Scope 1, right?
So why then, as a flyer, would I need to qualify *MY* flights as Scope 3? That would be double-counting the same fuel emissions that the airline itself is burning.
No wonder there are such problems with Scope 3 emissions—it lends itself to double counting and confusing total carbon emissions rather than the consumption of energy itself.
Good question. I suspect the answer is that it does not matter where it is accounted for, either stage 1 or stage 3, just as long as it is accounted for just once at some point.
Of course, this again leaves a major problem in that it allows the stage 1 people to say it should be accounted for at stage 3 and vice a versa.
They don't currently pay for scope 3 emissions. No company or gov't does that I'm aware of. Thus, to get ahead of the game, buy your own personal offsets till the world catches up in ethics. It's the only option right now, if you're a heavy carbon user.
They don't currently pay for scope 3 emissions. No company or gov't does. Thus, to get ahead of the game, buy your own personal offsets till the world catches up.
Thanks for the shoutout! Love the apple pie analogy.