Net zero targets are increasingly being met through offsets and land-sector accounting rather than real cuts to fossil fuel emissions. The result is climate progress on paper, while pollution continues in practice.

Net zero emissions by 2050 has become a major failure because it is enabling climate targets to be met without a significant reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

Net zero was intended to provide a pathway to decarbonising the global economy. It is now doing the opposite. The fossil fuel industry and complicit governments have combined the misuse of net zero/carbon offsetting with the fig leaf of carbon capture and storage to carry out a brilliant greenwashing operation.

It is essential there is accurate reporting of progress towards the global phase out of fossil fuels, but net zero reporting is failing to do this and should be replaced with actual emissions reporting.

The Paris Agreement calls for a balance between sinks and sources of emissions in order to achieve what has become known as global net zero. Net zero refers to a state whereby greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are reduced as close to zero as possible and the remaining emissions are balanced by permanent (in theory) removals from the atmosphere. Net zero was prescribed as a goal because it is impossible to eliminate all emissions in the foreseeable future. This doesn’t invalidate making a 100 per cent decarbonisation of the global economy a goal to aspire to.

Carbon offsetting is the method being used to balance emissions that currently can’t be stopped. If carbon offsetting was being used as intended it would mainly be used by industries where technologies have not yet been developed to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, such as aviation, shipping, steel, cement and fertilisers. Other companies and public entities could also legitimately use offsetting for residual emissions after they had eliminated emissions to the greatest extent........

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