We ultimately need both pathways to meet our greenhouse gas goals.”ġ. If you till a field that had been no-till, you release carbon, but if you reduce nitrogen, it’s a one-and-done and you don’t have to worry about permanence. “More and more though, the people I talk to are excited about the opportunity for avoidance credits because they don’t run into the same challenges around permanence that sequestration efforts often brush up against. “So much of the rhetoric today is around carbon sinks and sequestration,” says Kaitlin. Removal and avoidance offsets are often part of the same protocol or project type. Emission avoidance credits, on the other hand, simply reduce or avoid emitting CO2 in the first place. High-integrity carbon credits are associated not only with long-term carbon removal but also rigorous validation and transparency, which will impact the value of the credits.Īgricultural related sequestration removes or captures carbon already in the atmosphere through practices like tree planting, no-till, or cover cropping. For example, planting a forest may store a great deal of carbon, but it is less valuable to a buyer if the forest burns down after 20 years. Accrediting organizations generally require the emissions associated with a sequestration project to remain stored for as much as 100 years to qualify as a high-integrity carbon credit. One of the challenges facing the carbon market is the question of permanence. “At the end of the day though, it’s the same types of in-field practices underpinning both insets and offsets.” “With the increase in net zero commitments coming from the food and agriculture industry, we are seeing a greater push towards supply chain mitigations,” says Kaitlin Fitzgerald, Vice President of Sustainability at Sound. Insets can address either direct and indirect emissions, and can include either carbon sequestration or greenhouse gas avoidance practices. What practices and reductions an organization will find depends on the industry, but could include supporting the implementation of regenerative practices on land from which the organization sources inputs or investing in cleaner vehicles. With carbon insetting, on the other hand, organizations find opportunities to reduce emissions within their own supply chains. In the agricultural industry, implementing sustainable farming practices can drive outcomes that can be sold as a carbon offset. This helps organizations that can capture carbon or reduce emissions to receive compensation for those practices, which might otherwise not be particularly profitable. Organizations can essentially pay to support carbon capture initiatives outside their own industry without directly reducing their own emissions. Capturing or reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is easier for some industries than others and is the principle at the heart of carbon offsets.
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