How does buying carbon credits help reduce C02?

Question

so to put it bluntly, it's just another load of smelly bo!!ocks then

Answer 1

It has no effect on CO2 in the atmosphere whatever.  It's exactly the same principle as the sale of indulgences once was in the Catholic Church.  You pay your money and it's OK to sin.  Nowadays, you pay your money and it's OK to generate "greenhouse gases" because you gave money to someone, allegedly to combat greenhouse gases.  Is this making sense to anyone?

Answer 2

Nickel John has the idea..  but in its simplest form:  buying carbon credits reduces CO2 because it is a way of reducing the cost of (e.g. subsidizing) technologies that reduce CO2 emissions (or capture CO2).

Ideally and ethically carbon credits should not be used by people who can afford them to justify their waste full ways (such as Al Gore flying around in his private jet plane).  

The proper use of carbon credits is that they should be purchased by polluters such as those that use cheaper methods of producing the energy we absolutely need (say coal fired power plants) to offset some of the CO2 that is emitted.   The $$ goes to either production methods that produce less CO2 but may be more expensive to operate.. or to actually capture CO2..

This will promote methods of energy production that emitt less CO2 by both increasing the cost of more polluting options and by promoting, and ideally reducing the cost of less polluting options.   This way we will reduce overall production of CO2  

The trick is the way CO2 credits are "quantified" to make sure that they are real.

Answer 3

OK SO MANY PEOPLE DON´T UNDERSTAND IT...

Carbon credits are an ACCOUNTING TOOL to quantify (in a positive or negative manner) the emission of the equivalent of a certain unit of greenhouse gases.

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Which unit? The unit is the CO2e which is an equivalent of one tonne of CO2 emitted (or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases).

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Positive or negative?

Negative: A carbon offset is the equivalent of ont tonne CO2e reduction in emissions which would not have happened

Positive:

An emission allowances is the government allowing you to emitt one tonne CO2e (provided there is a limit of greenhouse gases emissions)

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Liquidity:

Carbon credits are to be bought or sold freely on markets as long as they correspond to certain criteria of quality (if not, they are like counterfeit money)

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Criteria for a  carbon offset:

A carbon offset corresponds to an emission reduction which happens thanks to the additional revenue from the carbon finance. The condition is the additionality. This means that without the revenue from carbon offsets, the project would not have been implemented due to certain barriers (e.g. too low profitability).

As an example, if a biomass generation is 4% less profitable than a coal power generation, carbon offsets can cofinance it and help turn the project to a green solution.

Answer 4

normally carbon credits are issued for sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere or by preventing CO2 emissions.

so effectively you are paying someone to take CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Answer 5

It doesn't reduce CO2. Look at it another way - you have two credit cards - One with a 0 balance and one with a $500.00 balance - You use the 0 balance credit card to pay off the $500.00 credit card - Then the next month you do it again -And so on and so on - in effect you never pay off that $500.00 dollars, since you keep using one credit card to pay off the other credit card each month. Who knows you might even get a net increase due to interest charges.

Answer 6

the government forcibly giving out "carbon credits" to companies just means that companies that dont us a lot of carbon credits like wind energy and such will sell thier carbon credits to fossil fuel companies. its a way for the "green energy" companies to make money off fossil fuel industry. thats why they are pushing for carbon credits so much.  just another way to use the government to steal from someone else and give it to you in the hopes of a utopian society.

Answer 7

just another way to get money for something that don't exist and put it in to the hand of those that don't deserve it.!!!!

Answer 8

It doesn't help at all its called stealing.Hopefully enough people will see this for the scam it is.