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Comment by 0xbadcafebee | Hacker News Reader

FWIW "Net Zero" is using carbon offsets to have "net output" of zero carbon emissions, but you can still emit as much carbon as you can buy credits for. Credits have been widely regarded as ineffectual and even worsening carbon emissions, deforestation etc.

Some utilities now have programs where you can pay them extra money "to get a portion of your power from a clean energy source". This money is used effectively to buy carbon credits. So they're asking customers to subsidize them in not needing to eliminate carbon emissions.

Actually not emitting carbon is what some utilities now call "real zero". But their commitments to "real zero" are a long ways away, and they're just corporate goals & in no way binding.

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Technically the difference between "net zero" and "carbon neutral" is supposed to be that "net zero" first eliminates all but "residual" emissions, and only then depends on offsets, whereas "carbon neutral" is more like what you describe (no required emissions cuts; possible to just buy — often dubious — offsets).

Science Based Targets Initiative for example requires companies signing up to their scheme to have credible plans to cut emissions by ~50% by 2030 and 90% by 2050 to claim that they're aiming for "net zero" [1] (SBTI itself was recently in the news because employees felt that recent policy changes leaned too heavily on offsetting; I don't really know what the current situation there is).

In practice usage of these terms my not be well regulated, so it's always worth checking out exactly whose definitions are being used.

[1] sciencebasedtargets.org/blog/net-zero-jargon-buster-a-guide-to-common-terms

This is made worse by the sheer, but actual, complexity that surrounds all this. Especially the "scopes¹".

So someone buying and selling, say, diesel in solar-powered-fuel stations, can still have "net zero" because they themselves don't emit, but both the people buying it, and the companies producing it, still emit immense amounts of carbon.

Which is then a very easy way to "greenwash" your business. To have marketing, that's not even a lie, but still being very misleading.

(I used to build accounting software for carbon emission accounting, it's way, way more complex that this diesel-example)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_accounting#Frameworks_a...

Net zero would make sense if there were some sort of legal backing to it.

I’ll happily pay $100 for a ton of carbon if it comes with a video of it being captured from the atmosphere (or reasonable chain of custody documentation) and it’s delivered to me in the form of biologically inert bricks.

In fact, we have some trees we haven’t cut down this year in the back yard. I’d happily sell you some bullshit carbon capture credits in exchange for not cutting them down next year if I could then convert that money into atmospheric carbon capture bricks. (It’d be more tax efficient for you to buy the brick directly though…)

When we tried to install solar panels, one of the MANY roadblocks our coop put in the way was that we had to opt out of additional charges for carbon credits before they would begin processing the solar installation.

So because we applied for a solar inspection to have solar installed, we were automatically enrolled in a program that costs us more money, for their carbon offsets. And they were selling it to us as if that's just the same as us installing solar panels.

Garbage. And that was just one of about a dozen different blocks they have as part of their process.

If I lived somewhere with other utility providers, I would tell them to fuck right off.

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