The issue is that this price doesn't scale. Let's say that the current price of an offset is $5/ton-of-co2. Let's say that presently all offsets are being put toward replacing inefficient wood-burning stoves in third-world countries with much more efficient electric stoves, because it's the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions. Right now, only a very small amount of offsets are being purchased (relatively little carbon is being offset); however, if lots of offsets were to be purchased (lots of people trying to offset their emissions) then we would run out of wood-burning stoves to replace with electric stoves and people who sell offsets would have to finance a more expensive type of carbon-reducing project, increasing the per-ton cost of a carbon offset. As demand for offsets rise, that new more expensive project would run out as well, and we would have to move onto increasingly expensive projects and the price of offsets would continue to rise.
In other words, if the whole world were trying to offset its carbon emissions, the price per offset would rise dramatically.
The idea is though, once the low hanging fruit of cheap offsetting dries up, causing offsets to become more expensive, the more appealing the price of carbon neutral energy becomes.
Say now the reason people still burn coal is because it's cheap and you can offset it cheaply, once offestting becomes more expensive, you may as well spend the same total amount, but buy green energy instead of coal+an offest.
Absolutely. Carbon offsets are a pretty cool solution, but I really want border-adjusted carbon taxes (border adjustment is a tax on imports from countries without a carbon tax so we don't just ship our carbon emitting work overseas). I favor carbon taxes because they're mandatory and more fool-proof (it's easier to measure carbon emitted than carbon that is not emitted).
Ahhhh I thought the offsets were "standalone positives" , like planting trees. Indeed if an offset can be helping others reduce, it's definitely a lower cost (and less scalability, as you point out)
Yeah, I had the same experience when I learned about this stuff. It's really interesting; the trick is quality assurance--making sure that the carbon offset you buy actually represents 1 ton of carbon being removed from the atmosphere, or more commonly 1 ton that would have been added to the atmosphere but won't be on account of your offset. As far as I can tell, the difficulty of QA is the only valid criticism of offsets.
In other words, if the whole world were trying to offset its carbon emissions, the price per offset would rise dramatically.