Carbon Offset Monitors - Sound Investment or a Scam?
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- Опубліковано 28 чер 2024
- Have you ever heard of a product called a carbon offset monitor that you can add to your solar installation? It sounds like free money, but there are many concerns I have...
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:31 What is Carbon Offsetting?
2:30 What does a Carbon Offset Monitor do?
2:57 Environmental and Financial Concerns
3:04 Additionality
3:55 Carbon Offset Certification
4:39 Double Counting
5:09 Offsetting... or Enabling?
6:51 Up-front Cost
7:16 Getting Paid
8:01 Reputation
8:31 Summary
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#carbon #offset #monitor - Навчання та стиль
I believe you are right to be skeptical as Carbon offset was originally set up to put a cost on CO2 emissions and encourage businesses to upgrade old equipment but are now becoming just a cheap way of "looking green" without having to do anything.
Agreed
I will be giving this a wide berth! It’s a greenwashing enabler. Reputable offset verification organisations wouldn’t certify it.
Those are my thoughts too, Rob!
@@GaryDoesSolar I noticed this from the top review of one of the installers: “My first two devices went in February 2021. I’ve added a third in December 2022. Now my brother has also signed up”. I assume that the reviewer is receiving 3x10p per kWh for the same production on top of export income!
Very useful, thanks :)
You're most welcome! :-)
Another great Video, Gary. I cant get past the concept of business even being allowed to buy carbon offsetting, let alone help them do it, and this smells awfully like a big, fat con !
Thanks, and I tend to agree 👍🏻
Completely agree!
Thanks, Michael - and the problem is, that many, many people see to be investing into these devices - and it worries me...
You have got it right Gary.
Cheers Julian - thanks 🙏
IMHO The whole carbon saving thing is a giant confidence trick.
Carbon offset credits are at the top of the pile of ridiculousness.
Yeah, I really don't like the idea of offsets - in my view, they just allow companies to essentially not change and feel good about it...
Yes, green washing by con merchants.
Dreadful idea
Hi Gary,
You are quite right to highlight the fiction of Net Zero.
It continues to surprise me that anyone who still retains the power of intelligent thought subscribes to the nonsense that exporting UK's carbon footprint abroad will make any difference to climate change.
Since the 'offset' will move to countries which are already increasing their 'carbon footprint' by increasing use of coal fired power stations the net effect will be negative.
Just like milk quotas trading carbon offsets might create a lucrative business model for some to exploit but no net benefit is achieved and the overall market gets distorted.
While governments and activist pressure groups continue to peddle policies which have no scientific or economic basis others will exploit them and make some quick bucks. Overall we will all be worse off as costs of energy increase and investment is diverted to ineffective and inefficient electricity generation and distribution.
This is great insight, Mike. Thanks for sharing. We should all simply concentrate on actual CO2 reduction - that’s all 👍🏻
@@GaryDoesSolar Thanks Gary. It's not rocket science!
I have been trying to persuade Michael Gove to amend Building Regulations to provide that all new industrial or residential buildings should have the maximum number of solar panels, or tiles, that their roofs can accommodate in a favourable aspect and that any change of use application for commercial or industrial buildings should require the same.
By decentralising solar generation the load on the grid of new generation and distribution is distributed such that much or most of it can be accommodated by the existing infrastructure or would reduce the load otherwise provided by drawing from the local grid. This not only obviates the need for immediate, extensive and expensive, renovation of the grid but also allows for a large increase in solar generation without the long delays experienced at present for new large installations (wind or solar).
It is important to lobby for a large number of smaller installations on existing and newly constructed rooftops as an alternative to large solar farms on land which could better be used for amenity, leisure or food production.
I was interested to drive past a farm in France recently which had a very large barn whose roof was entirely covered on both slopes with solar panels. This is increasingly common in South West France and, no doubt, these farms are probably self sufficient in electricity. In UK, where export to the grid is easier than in France they could also provide a surplus to the grid on many days. Our newish local supermarket (Le Clerc) also has the whole of the shading over the car park covered with panels which provide all its needs.
Yip I agree and have often argued carbon offset is a cop out. Many carbon producers offset by planting tress and the. claims of the carbon it will capture over its lifetime, but what if the plantation fails due to flooding or predation etc….no carbon capture just carbon released.
The carbon offset monitor sounds to be a con, you already have a certified export meter recording your exported energy, a contract of some sort with your energy provider would suffice.
Great points! Thanks for sharing...
I just had a look at the financials for ESE Group and Rowan Energy that offer a 10p rate and meter is or was £525. The companies seem a tiny fraction of the size I would expect if this had a strong uptake which worries me.
Thanks for sharing this insight, Stephen - yeah, I'm hearing that the price of that particular product has increased over the years, potentially to over £1,500 if you don't get an installation through ESE...
@@GaryDoesSolar I would always check the financials on the government companies website of any company I was looking to buy Solar, any major purchase or anything I hadn’t seen before like this carbon offset. You can see how long they have been trading, financials (audited or not) and who the directors are and then Google them.
www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company
I’ve never heard of these carbon offset monitoring schemes for domestic properties. Your example of £500 is a lot of money for what is essentially just an energy monitor with (apparently) fancy credentials. I’m curious why the MCS certified solar energy meters can’t be used to record the same information.
I’ll certainly look into it though.
As for the ethics of it, I’m all for carbon taxes. At the right price, such market trading mechanisms are the most efficient and effective way to stimulate investments into eliminating pollution. If a business has to buy carbon credits to continue polluting, then their business model is burdened with higher ongoing operating costs, making that business less viable. If that business decides to clean up their act or shut down as a result of the additional carbon credit liabilities, then the credits have done their job.
Hi Anthony, I always value your thoughts so thanks for taking the time to share them. While I personally don't like the concept of carbon credits, I'd be happy if they were enforced as a temporary solution - meaning that a business could only benefit from continuing to use carbon credits if they demonstrated actual carbon reduction over time (essentially, mechanisms to avoid abuse). What do you think?
@@GaryDoesSolar There certainly is abuse being recorded in the carbon trading system. For example you can have the landowner of a forest and they will claim carbon credits simply for having that forest and not chopping it down. The carbon credits are issued supposing that the forest would otherwise be chopped down even though it was never planned to be chopped down. This is one of the most blatant examples of abuse when it comes to the carbon credit system.
I certainly don’t have definitive answers for this. That certainly needs to be an emissions quota system on a global level. Indeed I am aware of various carbon trading schemes around the world but I’m not familiar with their mechanisms. The problem with these kind of systems is that it’s terribly easy to create emissions without recording it (e.g. clearing land by burning forests) and it’s also terribly easy to claim that you’ve sequestered carbon without adequate methods of demonstrating how much, or indeed if that sequestration is over and above what would have happened by natural processes.
At a national level HMRC has records of coal, oil, gas consumption in our country as well as import/export quantities. I’m guessing carbon emitting industrial process leading to steel and cement sales are also quantified by HMRC. So carbon emissions can be inferred from those records, and indeed they are recorded right down to a individual company / retail sale. The question is whether those records account for all the carbon emissions activity. I suspect that it’s most of the activity, but agriculture is also big, but I’m not an agricultural expert. There’s a lot of carbon locked up in soil, and that can be sequestered or released in ways that are hard to record.
So then that brings up the question of defining and recording carbon credits. To my mind a carbon credit should only be given when you remove CO2 from the atmosphere. In a simple comparison, planting a tree will do that, but running your life with solar power doesn’t. Solar is simply the avoidance of CO2 emissions rather than the removal of CO2.
But carbon credits do appear to actually be given for avoiding carbon emissions. And this is where the abuse happens. To my mind it’s impossible to record avoided carbon emissions. You can avoid carbon emissions for example simply by turning off a light, but it’s frankly absurd to be given a credit for that.
So I think in conclusion, carbon emissions quotas, credits and trading needs some explanation (in layman’s terms), with a question of how it can be reformed. Do I fancy giving that a go? That’s going to be a lot of homework!
@@anthonydyer3939 Thanks for laying out your detailed thoughts on this 👍 In my mind, it all feels intangible... so if you're able to tie it down to something practical and workable, I'd be impressed!
I contacted ESE and they quoted me £1500 to fit a meter, with a 5 year warranty. With my average generation of 2,500 kWh, it would take six years before it had even paid for itself. Probably really not worth it for my size array - 5.36kWp
Thanks very much for this information, Neil - wow! It seems the price of the unit has increased 3-fold since launch, but why…?
Is this only in the UK? Australia doesn’t seem to have this! Or we do but it’s happening in the background for only the energy retailer.
Couldn’t a retailer use an existing consumption monitor to calculate your carbon offset, or is the additional device required for certification purposes
I think some of your concerns exist regardless of this; most retailers are offering smart meter upgrades which they could easily make the same observations without needing any additional device such as a ‘carbon offset monitor’
The device I saw was UK-based, but like any new, growing market there is the attraction for 'snake oil' products and services to appear - so I wanted to make the video in case people come across products like this anywhere in the world, so they can make an informed purchasing decision...
how long before you need the carbon credits for your own house, car, heating system, flying air miles etc?
So my view is that we should dump the whole notion of carbon credits, and just recognise where we're using carbon, and try to reduce that usage over time...
I might have missed something, but what does this additional Offset Meter measure that your smart meter or energy generation meter cannot…..or is it simply that our energy providers are using our smart meter data and claiming these credits for themselves?
You raise a very good point. Your string inverter already does a good job of tracking generation - and to my mind, this is a much better solution than strapping on an additional unit to do the same thing... but none of the inverter manufacturers are rushing to offer such services, as far as I can see... telling, perhaps?
@@GaryDoesSolar
It strikes me that you can get the same information from known parameters. Octopus energy attempt to show you something similar as part of your bill. Octopus watch app has similar data
Interesting...carbon ironically does grows on trees, but the money (or the value it represents) does not, and it has to come from somewhere? Are there any useful metrics to say what 1 Tonne of CO2 mitigation is actually worth on the open market? We might then at least be able to "start" calculating what a KWh is worth... but lets also remember, hypothetically if the entire grid was already renewable, with the production of yet more power, what exactly are you off setting?
You would be offsetting the upkeep and maintenance of the grid and power stations, wind farms etc.
Great points. I might do another video at some point, looking into the whole 'net zero' paradigm...
@@GaryDoesSolarGood idea Gary. I have always thought the concept of Net Zero was rubbish. If we simply export the carbon footprint of manufacturing abroad to reduce UK "internal" carbon footprint is very likely that it would go to China or India where large amounts of electricity are still generated using coal so that the net carbon debt in World terms would actually increase.
If we continued to manufacture in UK then allowing for renewable generation and more efficient manufacturing processes we could reduce the net carbon emissions as well as supporting investment in and profits from UK industry and creating jobs in UK instead of abroad.
@@michaelblackmore883 Yeah, you're right - if humankind is really interested in dealing with the issue, then we must simply deal with it - head on! There is certainly an argument to be made that carbon offsets are a way to generate funds to enable CO2 reduction, but I feel in practice it doesn't actually work. Happy for people to show me case studies where such funding has worked though...!
@@GaryDoesSolar Rare as hens teeth I expect if the full across the board accounting is done rather than the usual highly partial approach designed to support the conclusion required before the analysis is done.
Cost of the monitor is £2000. Payment of 10p per kWh produced is capped at 4,800 kWh per year. If you produce more you do not get paid for the additional. There appears to be no guarantee of how long the payments would be paid for, nor if the 10p is fixed.
Is this for the ESE Group monitor supplied by Rowan Energy? Call me a cynic, but one might conclude from what you say here that there's a struggle to meet ongoing financial obligations to existing customers and these are changes applied to mitigate matters... Is that sustainable though...?
@@GaryDoesSolar yes it is. I produced 10,000kWh in the last 12 months so only getting paid for half is not interesting. I heard from another source that he tried to buy it yesterday but was told monitors were in short supply so could only be supplied if panels etc were purchased as well. The chap from Rowan mentioned they were expanding their block chain. I am not sure what this could mean for the integrity of our data. I am very suspicious of this until more info is available.
@@brianjenkins7989Thanks Brian. Would you be happy to keep in touch with me via email on this topic? It would be great if so, and I’d have current information that will help others make good decisions. My email is me@garydoessolar.com if that works for you 🙏
It is just a multi layered scam. The only people making money here are the ones selling the monitor. Carbon credits are just the easy way out for businesses that don't want to change.
I'm honestly not sure how paying 10p per kWh is sustainable, when the going rate for carbon offsets is at most half that. For example, an average customer with a 5kW array is able to generate around 5MW every year. So that's £500 per year. Over a 25-year lifetime of the array, that's £12,500 - again, just for ONE customer...
@@GaryDoesSolarBut the secratary of the Nigerian prince will answer all of your questions 😂
I totally agree. Carbon offsetting or credits are definitely a con...its another dieselgate, except that it is a legal con.
The lazymans way of greenwashing to a tee.
Within the first minute, I found this offensive. The whole carbon off eating scheme is a con. It’s not selling futures, it’s sellling “maybes” and even at that, they sell them twice and aren’t regulated.
If all it does is measure the current passed through it like a normal meter and is based on the AC side then couldn't some naughty people just wire it via there incoming AC and produce carbon credits for using grid electricity?! 😂
I presume it stores and sends half hour data so knows the solar curve so you can't game it.
Not something I would look at as its doesn't sit well with me.
I believe the original version of some products were just CT clamps, but that's very easily 'gamed' as you say. In my mind, if you were ever going to do this properly, the inverter equipment manufacturers could build in certified capability... but given that no inverter manufacturer that I know of has done this, I have to ask myself why not...? ;-)
Anyone got one they can send to Big Clive? 😁
That’s a brilliant idea!
Seems to defeat one of the reasons I went with solar (to stop using fossil fuels) So my effort is defeated so someone else can burn fossil fuel.
Agreed - I really don't like the idea of carbon offset monitors at all...
0.04%
?
0.03% in 1920. Very good way to highlight that it's gone up 35% in 100 years and we should be doing more to bring it back down. Glad you are as concerned as everyone else and we should be doing more, great to have you on side 👍
@@GaryDoesSolar juvenile attempt to make some point about how much CO2 is in the atmosphere.
@@steve_787How did the optimal level for global well being get calculated? Can you show me a link!
@@steve_787 I'm a sceptic.
I'm not sure what the actual value should be. Why is the 1923 value the correct one. What's wrong with .05% ??
If we go to 0.01% would that be better 🤣
We need CO2 or plants will die off
I believe this is nothing to do with carbon offset and this device is mining for coins.
And I've yet to encounter *any* compelling case studies that definitively demonstrate the viability of crypto coins in real-world applications...
They sounds like a scam!
Yeah, I really don't like the concept of them...