by SEATTLE – At Climate Pledge Arena, the ice is made from rainwater, the Zambonis are electric and the roof is essentially recycled, dating back to an earlier version of the venue erected in 1962.
From solar panels in the parking lot to free public transportation to games, the building operators have gone green throughout, leading to the announcement in October that it was the world’s first “carbon certified” stadium. zero”.
It’s a title that some carbon experts say is difficult to prove.
The 18,300-seat stadium produces few direct emissions from its operations, but to offset greenhouse gases produced during its construction, Seattle-based Amazon purchased voluntary offset carbon credits that originate in the Colombian rainforest. The voluntary offset market has been rocked by scientific findings suggesting that many carbon projects, particularly those designed to prevent deforestation, routinely exaggerate their impact.
“Do we see limitations in the legacy carbon market? The answer is yes,” said Jamey Mulligan, head of carbon neutral science and strategy at Amazon, adding that the company was using its scale to improve the market.
In an interview, Mulligan said the company bought the credits several years ago, when it was just getting started in the carbon market. He said Amazon believed this particular project used relatively conservative estimates and was of high quality, but also recognized that the voluntary carbon market needed more rigor.
Mulligan said “more work is needed” to ensure baseline projections are conservative and methodologies are sound in nature-based carbon credit projects in general.
“This is a market that has to be successful and has to scale far beyond what it has been operating today,” he said. “And you won’t get there without trust.”
Donna Lee, an executive at carbon rating company Calyx Global, said her company’s analysis suggests that rainforest credits purchased for the stadium likely helped prevent some deforestation. But Lee also said she was at “overcredit risk,” meaning the project likely claimed more benefits than it delivered, according to Calyx’s analysis.
The fact that the people at Climate Pledge Arena, backed by Amazon’s deep pockets and a large group of sustainability workers, can’t convince outside experts that their compensation lives up to their paper billing shows how deep the The credibility crisis in the voluntary carbon market has returned. .
If Climate Pledge Arena is a monument to the possibilities of a green future, it is also a prime example of how difficult it can be to achieve a truly zero-carbon footprint.
“They’ve made some good faith efforts here, but like many companies, they’re caught in this changing landscape of what’s considered credible,” Derik Broekhoff, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute in Seattle, said of the arena operators. “It’s difficult to work within a system full of flaws.”
credit crisis
Carbon credits, or offsets, are eliminations or reductions of emissions. Companies purchase these credits, which are typically listed on nonprofit organization records, and use them to offset the carbon pollution associated with their businesses.
Companies have used voluntary offsets to market products with labels such as “carbon neutral,” to meet internal emissions targets and support climate action projects. Critics say they can facilitate greenwashing and limit companies’ ambitions to reduce emissions in their core business practices.
Construction operations account for around 27% of global carbon emissions, according to Architecture 2030. Common construction materials, such as cement, iron, steel and aluminum, are responsible for an additional 15%.
Broekhoff discourages companies from relying on compensation to make marketing claims: “A lot of these credits can be associated with verbiage,” he said. Meanwhile, others, including Amazon, are trying to reform the voluntary carbon market, where prices have plummeted, and make it more rigorous.
Climate Pledge Arena is as green as the buildings. The International Living Future Initiative (ILFI), which evaluated the stadium’s emissions data and deemed it a “zero carbon” building this fall, requires operators to eliminate all fossil fuels, operate efficiently and use environmentally friendly materials. low carbon emissions in construction.
Beyond the zero-carbon label requirements, the stadium’s sustainability team collects invoices from food vendors, waste haulers, utilities and artists to estimate indirect emissions from each concert and sporting event. In the first year of operation, the building was responsible for approximately 38,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions. Stadium operators have promised to buy offsets each year to offset all indirect emissions, meaning the carbon cost of each guest’s concert T-shirt, burger and Uber ride is accounted for.
Amazonian money, Colombian credits
The stadium purchased renewable energy certificates to cover all of its energy needs and plans to be an anchor user of the local electric utility’s plan to create a new renewable energy facility.
But stadium construction can only be green to a certain extent. During its construction, it generated about 37,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, according to Rob Johnson, senior vice president of sustainability and transportation for Climate Pledge Arena and the Seattle Kraken, the NHL team that plays there.
ILFI allows operators to purchase carbon offsets one time to offset construction emissions. As part of its naming agreement, Amazon took the lead in acquiring offsets.
The company purchased and retired carbon credits from a project in Colombia called Acapa, which is part of the nonprofit Verra registry, an organization that sets standards for carbon market projects. When asked, Amazon did not share the price it paid for the Acapa credits.
The nearly 144,000-acre Acapa project was initially funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and later transferred to a number of nonprofit organizations. The project aims to reduce logging by local families and incentivize other economic projects with less environmental impact such as the cultivation of coconuts, acai and cocoa, according to project documents.
Carbon credits of this type, called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), have come under scrutiny by academics and journalists.
Several academic studies have found that these types of credits, together, offer a fraction of the claimed benefit. A Guardian headline called these credits “useless.”
In general, “the methodologies are not aligned with the science,” said Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project., who has argued that the records are so flexible that they allow project developers to overestimate benefits without sufficient independent audit.
Lauren Withey, who now works for the nonprofit Earthjustice, spent about two years in Colombia studying nature-based offsets like Acapa. She said it’s easier to design a project that creates carbon credits on paper than it is to change the economics of how poor villages in remote rainforests operate.
“Basically, it’s very difficult to change the livelihood dynamics in these communities,” Withey said.
Meanwhile, several new carbon rating agencies now offer independent carbon project models, which are based on satellite and project data.
Lee, of ratings agency Calyx Global, said his firm believed the Acapa project had achieved some emissions reductions.
“It has really reduced deforestation. We can’t say the same about every project,” Lee said of the company’s assessment of him. “However, they are overcrediting. It’s very common”.
Penance, not absolution
The Verra registry, which has come under scrutiny, revised its methodology on Monday in a bid to provide better quality control. The nonprofit will now establish project baselines in place of project designers and use remote sensing technologies to ensure emissions reductions.
“It will start to deliver more reliable results to REDD and improve trust,” Toby Janson-Smith, director of innovation and program development at Verra, said at a news conference.
Climate Pledge Arena’s Johnson said his team relied on Amazon’s experience in the carbon market for offset purchases.
Amazon is now the world’s largest buyer of renewable energy, Mulligan said. It is also the largest buyer of direct air capture credits in the world. The company co-founded the Leaf Coalition, which funds large-scale rainforest protection and is trying to set a higher standard for offsets and transparency.
Asked whether he thought it was fair to call the stadium a carbon-free building, given the uncertainty surrounding REDD projects, Mulligan said: “That’s an interesting philosophical question that we probably won’t weigh in on,” adding that the stadium and Amazon had done “hard work to decarbonize the actual facility and its operations and value chain” before purchasing the offsets.
Haya agreed that the initial work to make the building as efficient as possible and create new sources of renewable energy was essential.
“The most important thing is to reduce their own direct emissions and that is primarily how they should be judged,” Haya said.
Some think the voluntary carbon market has lost so much credibility that it is time to abandon marketing products as “zero carbon” or “net zero” when it comes to carbon credits.
“It’s a risk to imply that you’re somewhere equivalent to zero,” Broekhoff said. “Consider these carbon credits a penance, not an absolution.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
