In Conversation: Seth Horowitz, CarbonClick

April 13, 2023

In this week’s episode of our ‘Sustainability in the Air’ podcast, CarbonClick’s Vice President of Enterprise Product & Strategic Partnerships, Seth Horowitz speaks with SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam and shares how carbon offsets, when used carefully, can be an asset to aviation.

You can listen and subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict and Google podcasts. Or, read the full deep dive on our sustainability hub here.

Why airlines should work on reduction strategies before offsetting

Here’s a preview of the episode below. You can also read a deep dive to learn how CarbonClick verifies and selects projects; why offsetting must be used as the last step mitigation strategy; CarbonClick’s offsetting platform for airlines and eCommerce companies; and why intentional flying is the way forward.

How CarbonClick maximises the impact of offsets

Having explored the offsetting landscape and the mechanics of the business, Horowitz believes that not all offsets are created equal. At CarbonClick, he says, there are carbon analysts who do their own selection and due diligence against the offsetting projects. “We don’t treat carbon offsets as commodity offerings; we curate a portfolio of projects that we feel are above reproach,” he says.

In order to ensure this, Horowitz says CarbonClick adheres to industry standards and verification bodies such as The Gold Standard. Above that, the company does its own additional due diligence to make sure that the projects meet CarbonClick standards for additionality and permanence. “We do our homework,” says Horowitz. “We want to make sure of the social standards of these projects as well – that there isn’t slave labour being used to manage a massive forest, for instance.”

In addition, Horowitz says the company has frank conversations internally as well as with their customers like Etihad to make sure they understand and can respond to any criticism. This also involves speaking with experts in the field in order to evaluate the criticism. “There are certain projects that are better than others. And we want to make sure we’re staying away from projects that are not the best – both in terms of perception or reality,” he explains. “So we work with them to apply the right offset projects based on science as well as perception.”

Our Take

Carbon offsetting is a contentious subject, and rightly so. It is often seen as the easy way out for companies, and is riddled with criticisms of greenwashing. To his credit, Horowitz addresses these criticisms head-on and offers a fair perspective on how CarbonClick tries to address these criticisms.

We interviewed CarbonClick’s founders Dave Rouse and Michelle Noordermeer in the first season of our podcast, where we explained the underlying mechanism of offsets and how they commodify Nature, reducing it to a “service-providing entity”. Carbon Offsetting is a market-based solution to reduce carbon emissions. Markets function through prices and in order for them to work for environmental issues, Nature and all the functions it performs (“services”) must be valued in economic terms. This reduces Nature to a “service-providing entity” (Sullivan, 2013).

Moreover, carbon offsetting is a prime example of “weak sustainability”, which puts forth the idea that natural capital and manufactured capital are substitutable. Such a perspective also assumes that using up non-renewable resources or polluting the environment doesn’t matter if it leads to abundant economic prosperity. Not only is that an impractical approach, its pursuit can lead to disastrous consequences — destroying natural habitats and wreaking havoc on the entire ecosystem.

It also assumes Nature as “fungible” or composed of substitutable units that we can continue to shift around as long as the sum total remains the same. So, environmental damages (losses) caused by polluters can be balanced out by equivalent environmental gains in order to restore a balance. As an example, through carbon offsetting, carbon emissions in one location can be compensated by sequestration in another.

As the “The Carbon Con” report suggested, most offsets on the market fail to deliver on their promises. Considering the low cost and high availability of carbon offsets, it is convenient for organisations to simply continue buying offsets without focusing on actual emissions reduction. For aviation, as Horowitz himself suggested, offsetting must be the last resort. Using carbon removal offsets and focusing on long-term carbon reduction is key.

In our piece earlier this year on “The Carbon Con” fiasco, our Head of Sustainability, Dirk Singer, recommended six principles that organisations using offsets must adhere to:

Do your homework: Evaluate the impact of the programme. Does it really remove CO2? Who is certifying it? What are their certification criteria?
Don’t decide on price alone: Price must not be the only criterion, especially given the number of unscrupulous operators.
Avoid deforestation protection credits: It is advisable to avoid credits from these schemes for now. Instead, focus on projects that proactively capture and store CO2.
Think local: Ideally, should do actual good in the area where you are based or where many of your customers are based.
Be clear in your communication: Carbon offsets are not a net zero silver bullet. No advertising or marketing material should claim they are.
Most importantly, work towards net zero: Offsets exist to help hard-to-decarbonise sectors like aviation, while the hard work of actually reducing industry emissions goes on in the background.

Since not all offsets are made the same, we need to be mindful of the pernicious outcomes should we choose to use them. While CarbonClick’s transparency and accountability is quite refreshing, getting to a stage where we no longer rely as much on offsetting would be great news for the planet, as Horowitz himself admits.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict, Google podcasts or on our sustainability hub here. Season 3 is brought to you by our sustainability partners, Cirium and CarbonClick.