Shell sold millions of carbon credits for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that never happened, allowing the company to turn a profit on its fledgling carbon capture and storage project, according to a new report by Greenpeace Canada.
Under an agreement with the Alberta government, Shell was awarded two tonnes’ worth of emissions reduction credits for each tonne of carbon it actually captured and stored underground at its Quest plant, near Edmonton.
This took place between 2015 and 2021 through a subsidy program for carbon, capture, utilisation and storage projects (CCUS), which are championed by the oil and gas sector as a way to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.
At the time, Quest was the only operational CCUS facility in Alberta. The subsidy program ended in 2022.
Agreed. Forestation can be a large contributor to reducing climate change, but any scheme that is offered by polluting companies should be viewed with extreme scepticism.
Yeah, not saying it wouldn’t help, but a lot of these schemes don’t have enough oversight to guarantee that the tree you paid for is effectively planted and cared for enough that it will survive.
Realistically we’ll need to do everything to tackle climate change: change away from fossil fuels, doing everything we can to sequester carbon (in a way that doesn’t generate more emissions), and probably also reduce consumption in general (degrowth).
A bunch of young trees don’t equate to old growth forests in any sense and it’s even worse if the species hasn’t evolved in in balance with that environment’s other species and conditions.
So it’s not even just that the tree needs to survive. On top of that we need to put time and resources into the right mix of regionally native trees which will thrive and integrate into their surroundings to properly reform ecosystems over numerous decades that we don’t even have.