Carbon neutrality vs net zero: what’s the difference?
And why it matters
When speaking about energy transition, two terms – carbon neutrality and net zero emissions – are often used interchangeably but represent very different approaches to combatting climate change.
Carbon neutrality means balancing greenhouse gas emissions by ‘offsetting’ – or removing from the atmosphere – an equivalent amount of carbon for the amount produced. A commitment to carbon neutrality does not require a commitment to reduce overall GHG emissions, but only to offset them. This result can be achieved by buying carbon credits.
According to Rete Clima, a carbon credit is a kind of permit that represents 1 ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere; carbon credits allow companies to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions through the creation of new forests or the use of CO2 capture and storage technologies.
Carbon neutrality means balancing greenhouse gas emissions by ‘offsetting’ – or removing from the atmosphere – an equivalent amount of carbon for the amount produced.
In contrast, a commitment to net-zero carbon means reducing GHG emissions with the goal of balancing the emissions produced and emissions removed from the earth’s atmosphere.
Take, as a simplified example, the case of air travel proposed by Herbert Smith Freehills: if, in total, people within a given business take 10 flights per year, the organisation could achieve carbon neutrality for those 10 flights simply by buying enough carbon credits or by supporting renewable-energy projects to offset the emissions (or a combination of the two). To achieve net-zero, the company would need to reduce the number of flights per year as much as possible (to five, for instance) and also invest in projects that remove from the atmosphere the carbon dioxide produced by emissions from the other five flights.
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The Science Based Targets Initiative provides the guidance and tools companies need to set science-based net-zero targets through The Race to Zero Campaign. The compensations produced through carbon credits seem acceptable, but according to experts, they are transitional and not sufficient enough to reduce the emissions to zero.
Even respected news outlets and world leaders occasionally confuse carbon neutrality and net-zero. And businesses that seek carbon neutrality, rather than net-zero carbon, have sometimes been accused of greenwashing – because it is an admirable achievement, but not comparable to reducing the emissions to zero.
To fix the damages caused to the environment, it will be still necessary to deal with the emissions produced over the years, once reduced new greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
A carbon credit is a kind of permit that represents 1 ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere.
Many countries and companies aim to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. According to National Academies’s data, the U.S. currently produces 6 Gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.
The amount of greenhouse gas emission is measured in terms of CO2-equivalent, which is the amount of CO2 that would have an equivalent global warming impact as a different greenhouse gas (for example, methane or nitrous oxide). To achieve net-zero emissions across the entire United States would require reducing net emissions by an average of 0,2 Gigatons of CO2-equivalent per year over the next 30 years. If the United States were to achieve this goal, it would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by about 10%.
The most feasible pathways to net-zero emissions include four main strategies. The first consists in generating electricity using sources such as wind, solar, nuclear and water power combined with advances in electricity storage. The combination of different renewables sources is one of the most effective ways to guarantee the energy supply.
Hydrogen will need to play an important role in the transition to a net-zero energy system. As shown in IEA’s Net-Zero Emissions by 2050 Roadmap, hydrogen demand should grow six-fold by 2050 and its use should expand to new sectors, including long distance transport, shipping, aviation, new uses in heavy industry or power generation.
The report Hydrogen for Net Zero shows an ambitious but realistic scenario to reach net-zero by 2050. The scenario is described in terms of hydrogen demand, infrastructure and investments required, to identify the investment gaps across geographies. The report is based on the data of cost and performance of hydrogen technologies provided by McKinsey & Company, the Hydrogen Council investment tracker, which covers all large-scale investments into hydrogen globally.
As shown in an IEA’s report, hydrogen will play an important role in the transition to a net-zero energy system.
The second strategy is using vehicles and equipment that are powered by electricity: switching to electric cars and trucks and using electric heating for buildings would greatly reduce emissions. The third strategy involves more efficient technologies and processes that reduce energy, such as “smart” technologies, which sense when energy is needed and when it is not, can help to optimize how electricity is generated and used, helping minimize waste.
Last but not least, it is important to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The offset emissions that are impossible to avoid, it is necessary to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it permanently.
Existing technologies can support all of these strategies, but they will need to be implemented at a very large scale to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This will require new policies and investments as well as careful attention to the social and economic trade-offs involved.
