Carbon Removals

Peter Fisher : Last year we started purchasing carbon removals rather than offsets to cover our corporate emissions. It is an important move that constitutes a marked acceleration of our carbon targets. At face value offsets and removals may sound like similar words for the same thing, but the difference is significant. This thought piece sets out the current landscape around offsets and removals, and outlines our position as a company.

What are Removals?

Most offsets are what is often called ‘avoided emissions’. In essence for every tonne of carbon emitted you pay someone else not to emit an additional tonne. Small amounts of money are exchanged and some guilt is alleviated, but the original tonne of carbon remains in the atmosphere.?

In recent years there has been a lot of scrutiny on the real world success of these schemes, particularly on lower cost afforestation credits.?By contrast removals are intended to actually draw carbon from the atmosphere. This can be done through a mixture of natural and/or engineered solutions.?The Oxford Principles, which form the backbone of corporate offsetting strategy, split removals into two types.

Short-lived, such as tree planting, which is reversible by human activity or forest fires, and Long-lasting (or durable) removals, which lock carbon away for thousands of years and are unlikely to be reversed. Those familiar with international climate deals will know that international plans like the Paris deal and subsequent global pathways are hugely dependant on these durable removals, but to date the progress towards the total removals needed by 2050 is a terrifying 0.0077%. These technologies need to be financed, and urgently.

Our Strategy

Given that some of the technologies are more embryonic than others, we have taken a portfolio approach comprising of 50%?Biochar, 33%?Enhanced Weathering, 10%?Direct Air Capture, 7%?Bio-oil?– all purchased via?Supercritical. One of these, enhanced weathering, is taking place already in Scotland through Future Forest Company and Direct Air Carbon Capture is due to take place in Scotland through Carbon Engineering. For technologies like Direct Air Capture, which are currently ramping up production, our removals include an additional afforestation short-term removal to bridge the gap. Actual delivery of removals is tracked and publicly visible via?www.cdr.fyi/.

Purchasing removals though is not an alternative to reducing emissions in the first place. We have reported our location and market-based emissions in line with GHG protocols since 2014. Then in 2016 we became the first firm of architects in the world and first UK SME to set approved Science Based Targets. This was followed a year later by becoming the first architect in the world to sign up to the UN’s Climate Neutral Now pledge, after which we offset all our market-based emissions using Gold Standard offsets. It is only through applying our science-based targets that we’re comfortable the removals are not acting as a fig leaf to mask inaction on climate change.

Following last year’s initial purchases we have now developed a removals strategy for Bennetts Associates. While the Oxford Principle sets out a roadmap to full durable removals by 2050, we are committing to 100% removals for all emissions by 2030.

Beyond this we will move to 100% immediately for those emissions that are most within our control, which are Scope 1 (gas), Scope 2 (electricity) and Scope 3 (Business Travel and Energy related emissions). Remaining Scope 3 emissions, mostly related to our suppliers will move to 100% by 2030. As always we offset based on market-based emissions, which excludes our renewable electricity. We will also discount any durable removals purchased by suppliers in the future (such as Microsoft), though they’re not there yet.

This strategy, together with our removals for 2021 and 2022?emissions, makes us one of fewer than 150 companies worldwide doing this. Rather?concerningly it makes us the 63rd largest purchaser of durable?removals in the world.

Costs

Carbon removals are significantly more expensive than offsets to purchase. But, it is increasingly common for companies to set an internal carbon price to better reflect the true cost of reducing emissions (for example Landsec ). In 2020, following?UKGBC renewables and offsets guidance, we set a minimum internal carbon price of ￡80/tCO2e. The following year we increased this to ￡160/t in order to remove 50% of our market-based emissions, with the remainder continuing to be offset. The cost of the removals alone was about ￡240/t. Since last year the government’s cost of carbon, with which the UKGBC aligns, has risen dramatically to ￡251/t. Significantly this almost exactly aligns with the cost of a high quality removals portfolio.

￡250/t for carbon removals sounds expensive unless viewed in the round. Our removals strategy for 2022 equates to about 0.3% of turnover. Or to put it another way, only two times the amount we spend on coffee, tea and biscuits each year. We hope this reflects the relative affordability of removals rather than an unusually high consumption of caffeine and sugary snacks.?The money left over after purchasing removals and offsets will go towards research into low carbon materials and donations to organisations involved in combatting climate change and will be additional to those that we?already make or activities we are already committed to.

A final note of interest regarding removals is that during last summer the UN added timber construction to its updated list of carbon removal technologies. This holds out the tantalising prospect of the carbon sequestered within timber construction having a monetary value that can be sold as a removal. Quite how that would work, be verified and monetised we don’t know, but research into this by Built by Nature is ongoing.

- Peter Fisher , Director at Bennetts Associates

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