Big tech companies are increasingly turning to nature to do the dirty work of cleaning up their greenhouse gas emissions. The idea is to use plants and ecosystems that naturally absorb CO2 to compensate for industry pollution, a tactic brands have come to call “nature-based carbon removal.” At first glance, these attempts sound a lot like carbon offset projects that have a checkered past.
Lessons learned These problems have been so persistent that even some of the biggest buyers of carbon offset credits have backed off and pivoted to other solutions that might actually prevent CO2 emissions in the first place. A Carbon Market Watch investigation into offset credits offered by eight major European airlines found that nearly all the companies bought offset credits from suspicious forestry projects, for example.