What’s net-zero worth?
2021 has been the year where many countries and companies pledged to ‘net zero’. This means the net result of carbon emissions is zero, but this doesn’t automatically mean no more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere, because there are multiple ways to compensate for carbon emissions (for example reforestation projects). One of the problems of these compensation techniques relates to the lack of developed and acknowledged calculation methods for carbon storage/capturing. In addition there is no central institution for administering and monitoring such carbon compensations. Scientists have therefore highlighted the urgency of emissions reductions in the magazine Nature and requested institutions to clearly define the definition of ‘net zero’, both for countries as well as companies.
