Carbon Credits Failure: Sachs, Romm, Rockström

From MasterResource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Low-quality carbon offsets are undermining global decarbonisation efforts. Around 40% of existing carbon pricing schemes allow the use of offsets, most with no effective limits on quality or quantity. Recent analysis shows that fewer than 16% of more than 2,300 offset projects actually delivered the emission reductions they promised.” – Johan Rockström, (Potsdam Institute)

“Don’t get tangled up in your own underwear,” an old saying goes. Such applies to the carbon management schemes created by governmental anti-CO2 policy.

You reap what you sow. If you politicize an issue by introducing government intervention into voluntary market transactions, then expect suboptimal outcomes. Call it government failure in the attempt to address alleged market failure.

Shame that Big Green does not see itself as the problem rather than “wrong” public policies. And here we are: the Progressive Left complaining about bad climate policy decades after they themselves went political.

Lisa Sachs (Columbia University)

Lisa Sachs, Director of Columbia’s Center on Sustainable Investment, stated:

Thanks to all who engaged w/ my post explaining why there are no credible carbon offsets. I’m pulling together some important points from the comments:

1. Offsets aren’t just reductions elsewhere.
   Companies aren’t honestly reporting challenges of decarb & buying credits altruistically to help achieve reductions elsewhere. They buy credits to falsely report fewer emissions than actually emitted – hence “offsetting.” [this is the result of the misguided emphasis on emissions reporting – more below]. If companies weren’t allowed to use credits to ‘cancel’ emissions, they wouldn’t buy them. A more credible way to have emitting companies pay for other reductions is to implement a levy- that incentivizes reductions & allows public investments to be made at scale w/out false accounting.
2. We need all mitigation & all removals.
   Real Net Zero requires full decarbonization, capture/sequestration of the very limited non-abatable emissions, AND preserving/enhancing (degrading) natural sinks AND DAC. We need all. There’s no room for offsetting. The attached pic is best I could find to show effect of using sinks as offsets.
3. Offsets don’t make projects financeable.
   Neither RECs nor offsets have ever made a large RE project bankable; offset revenues are too small & uncertain for financing. The real enablers of finance are cost-competitive technologies, long-term offtake, mandates/incentives/subsidies & de-risking mechanisms.
4. Nature & land-use projects need real financing.
   Restoration & regenerative land use require landscape-scale planning & public financing. Carbon markets are not the only way to leverage private finance; the public sector can borrow (affordably) & issue other innovative debt/catalytic instruments.
5. Markets can/should finance much of the transition.
   Finance is already flowing to many sectors where there are buyers, sellers & cost-competitive technology. Where the transition faces friction (from new technologies, infrastructure gaps, or cost differentials), we need to diagnose the challenge (market risk, regulatory uncertainty, cost of capital, technology premium, etc.) and structure appropriate solutions w/relevant, targeted commitments of offtakers, suppliers, public entities, etc.

The defeatism is striking: many suggest its offsets or paralysis. In reality, coordination works (even in the US!): it’s practical, proven, & achievable. But it’s undermined when critical actors can opt for easier alternatives.

And this is perhaps the core issue: by evaluating corporate climate commitments primarily via emissions footprints, we’ve undermined what matters most. What’s most valuable — collective engagement, innovation, and collaboration across sectors & supply chains — isn’t rewarded/incentivized when companies can simply buy credits to “cancel” emissions. The net effect is less cooperation, slower transitions & misplaced confidence that accounting equivalence will substitute for real decarbonization.

Joe Romm (University of Pennsylvania)

Here is a press release from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media, titled Carbon offsets have failed for 25 years, and most should be phased out – research (October 13, 2025):

Academics at the University of Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania have conducted the most comprehensive review of evidence on the effectiveness on carbon offsetting to date and concluded the practice is ineffective and riddled with “intractable” problems.

Carbon offsets are projects that generate credits meant to represent the reduction, avoidance, or removal of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the atmosphere. The first carbon offset was generated in 1989. The authors call for the phasing out of most credits except those generated by permanent carbon dioxide removal.

“We must stop expecting carbon offsetting to work at scale. We have assessed 25 years of evidence and almost everything up until this point has failed,” says co-author Dr Stephen Lezak, researcher at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. “The present market failures are not due to a few bad apples but rather to systematic, deep-seated problems, which will not be resolved by incremental changes.”

“We hope our findings provide a moment of clarity ahead of COP30: These junk offsets—the ones not backed by permanent carbon removal and storage—are a dangerous distraction from the real solution to climate change, which is rapid and sustained emission reductions,” says lead author Dr Joseph Romm, Senior Research Fellow at the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.

The most severe issues uncovered by the research are nonadditionality (generating credits without reducing emissions), impermanence, leakage, double counting, “perverse incentives,” and the “gameability” of crediting systems, where bad actors have been able to routinely circumvent even well-designed rules. Far from solving these problems, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which was finalised at COP29, simply restated “long-ignored tenets of carbon market development, with the specious expectation that this time the outcomes might differ significantly,” the authors say.

“Despite efforts to implement safeguards, carbon offset projects continue to face documented cases of weak accountability, risking the perpetuation of neocolonial patterns of appropriation. While nature-based projects can deliver local benefits, these should be financed through mechanisms other than carbon credits, such as contribution claims where projects are financed while still ensuring that purchasing entities are responsible for reducing their own emissions,” says co-author Amna Alshamsi, a doctoral researcher at the University of Sussex’s School of Global Studies. Previous research has shown how offset programs routinely overestimate their climate impact, in many cases by as much as a factor of ten or more.

Going forward, all offset markets should prioritise developing high-integrity, durable CDR and storage—with long-term measurement and verification—the authors conclude, while recognising that effective and scalable CDR may not be possible, and will certainly require intensive research and investment.

This approach aligns with the Oxford Offsetting Principles, which encourage companies to reduce emissions first and foremost, and to transition to durable, carbon removal offsetting for residual emissions.

Johan Rockström, (Potsdam Institute)
Johan Rockström, Director at PIK- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Professor Earth System Science, University of Potsdam, referencing a recent Nature Communications study, wrote:

Low-quality carbon offsets are undermining global decarbonisation efforts. Around 40% of existing carbon pricing schemes allow the use of offsets, most with no effective limits on quality or quantity. Recent analysis shows that fewer than 16% of more than 2,300 offset projects actually delivered the emission reductions they promised. In our new Nature commentary, we highlight how this lack of integrity erodes trust in carbon markets and why aligning investments with rigorous, science-based carbon assessments must become a priority. Strengthening credibility and accountability in carbon markets must be central to COP30 discussions and to global decarbonisation efforts ahead.

Carbon offsets is a major divide within the Progressive Left, Big Green machine–the Climate Industrial Complex to a lot of us. Another civil war regards nuclear acceptance, a story for another day.