Accounting for albedo in carbon market protocols | Nature Communications

[Philip Bogdonoff]

FYI 

Accounting for albedo in carbon market protocols | Nature Communications

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64317-x

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Thanks Philip.  This article exposes the incoherence of treating carbon as the be all and end all of climate while ignoring albedo.  You cannot claim that a project helps to reverse global warming when its darkening impact outweighs its GHG impact.  Hopefully this will help start a policy reversal.  A simple calculation indicates that albedo decline in the last decade has caused five times as much warming as new emissions.  Perhaps that is just too horrifying for people to think about.  It is similar to this article’s observation that an integrated analysis of cooling impacts is needed.  Such analysis provides a quantitative justification for focus on solar geoengineering, as the only practical way to reverse the darkening of the world. 

 

Here is the article abstract: The climate benefits of some Voluntary Carbon Market projects may be overestimated due to a lack of accounting for albedo change. Here we analyze 172 Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation projects within the market and find more than 10% occur in places where albedo may entirely negate the climate mitigation benefit, and a quarter occur in places where albedo may halve the mitigation benefit. Yet, the majority are concentrated where albedo changes are expected to be minimal, and 9% of projects occur where albedo would augment the mitigation benefit. Recent data are making albedo accounting possible, and we outline an iterative approach for incorporating albedo considerations into carbon crediting protocols to prioritize projects with greater climate benefit and more accurately quantify credits that may be used to address unabated emissions. We also call on the scientific community to create tools to enable accounting for other important biophysical changes, such as evapotranspiration, which is not yet quantifiable within the Voluntary Carbon Market.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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[Anton Alferness]

It appears as though the authors are recommending very little adjustment in the upward direction for projects that positively impact albedo, and mostly are looking to discount c-credit value if there is no benefit or worse. That seems odd given the amount of climate benefit improving albedo can have, so this should be improved upon. 

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[Wolf Lichtenstein]

Thanks for sharing this Philip. The paper points out that albedo isn't addressed in current land-based protocols (ARR, specifically). I can attest that albedo isn't addressed in any GHG Registry methodology, anywhere to date. This is new for the carbon markets. I'm not sure that the marketplace will welcome yet another hurdle to leap, I can foresee a registry like Verra incorporating albedo into its risk-based tool, the AFOLU Non-Permanence Risk Tool (NPRT). And perhaps, incorporating albedo into their new streamlined internal risk-based approach for project approval. Yet, quantifying albedo into CO2e doesn't seem practical.

I suggest that we need to be cautious on setting expectations that albedo can be fully integrated into carbon markets. I view it as Albedo and CDR are sisters, sometimes they get along, other times they are in opposition. and sometimes they share the same clothes. Yet, these sister groups of technologies are individuated enough, in my mind, that laying albedo issues at the doorstep of carbon markets is a stretch, saying you fix this one, too! I do agree that carbon projects should not have a detrimental effect on albedo. Yet, carbon credits are rigorously calculated, and permanent. Permanence is increasingly important to the carbon marketplace - 200 yr+ is becoming the norm for new protocols. I'm not sure that albedo effects can be quantified rigorously enough, and deemed permanent. At least not yet. Please correct me here, isn't albedo a quantity that is always in flux, and seasonal at best. To incorporate albedo changes into CO2e, note that materiality is typically set at 5% for smaller projects - and large scale projects materiality may be set as low as 1%. Meaning, that any calculated albedo change translated into CO2e would have to be exactingly accurate.

Perhaps in the future albedo enhancing carbon projects can claim albedo restoration as a project co-benefit, but maybe not directly incorporated into the carbon credit claim. Particularly so, if albedo degrading projects are screened out, or at least discounted. 

Kind regards,

Wolf

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Wolf, you are right that incorporating albedo into carbon credits is a problem. What is needed—if we are serious about addressing global warming—is a shift from carbon credits to cooling credits, calculated on the basis of an action’s net impact on radiative forcing, what Ye Tao has called Cooling Return On Investment.

Why has this not occurred? One factor may be that it would destroy the economic rationale for carbon credits. The Royal Society estimated that sunlight reflection will be 1000 times more cost-effective in terms of cooling than emission reduction. This finding is not generally acknowledged, because it undermines the whole carbon market orthodoxy.

For those invested in existing climate subsidies and policies, that vast disparity in effectiveness makes it easier to exclude, ignore and deny albedo altogether. As I argued in my article in The Hill, albedo is the giant at the gate—one that threatens to tear down the ideological scaffolding of carbon markets and replace it with something far more effective. To put radiative forcing at the centre of climate policy requires an act of creative destruction. That is precisely why the IPCC avoids the subject of albedo, why IPCC is not fit for purpose, and why an Albedo Accord is needed, modelled on the Montreal Protocol.

Standards International prepared the attached draft report a few years ago on an international standard for radiative forcing credits, but quietly abandoned it. My interpretation is that the failure to proceed was largely because of an unrecognised systemic corruption - the entrenched carbon market system simply could not survive the disruptive clarity such a standard would bring.

Recognising the climate impact of albedo loss is the rapidly arriving Kodak Moment for carbon markets.  Just as digital cameras ended Kodak’s empire, recognising albedo loss will end the pretence that carbon credits can affect climate change.  The old model is failing, and a new paradigm must take its place.

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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[Wolf Lichtenstein]

Hi Robert, 

Thank you so much for this ISO draft and your comments! I appreciate the clarity and your perspective. This is a history that I wasn't aware of. Do you know the status of ISO 14082? This WD is from 2019. I have colleagues on TC 207 that I can check in with. Given ISO's merger with the GHG Protocol, albedo discussions are likely being pushed down the list at a time where it should be the first on the climate list! 

This WD in sec. 5.1.1 identifies an RF climate footprint (mW/m2), a basis for a tradable unit. Has there been discussion about developing an "Albedo Registry" akin to GHG registries? Honestly, I wouldn't ask permission from carbon markets, and just do it. Borrowing the parts of the carbon market frameworks that are appropriate, say validation/verification, but create a separate marketplace. I'd look at the ongoing creation of Biodiversity Credits as an inspiration. From this perspective of the WRI, it appears that starting up one effort (one project) and selling the Biodiversity Credits - or in this case selling Albedo credits privately is a good starting point. A registry could then form, on the basis of several entities running albedo projects, all creating the common unit of Albedo Enhancement (AEU?). 

It certainly would be helpful to have ISO 14082 finalized and published. It will take several entities rolling out these projects to create a real marketplace. 

I don't see an albedo based marketplace replacing the current carbon markets - both are needed. The albedo market will give the carbon markets more time to scale and be more effective in the long-term.  From the WRI link above we see that Biodiversity credits are going out at $35. What should an albedo credit cost? What volume of AEUs could be created using the various SRM technologies? What ROI would a SRM project developer expect in an albedo marketplace? How do we convince wealthy corporate types to provide financing?

There's still a lot to unpack here, but I feel that there can, and actually must be a pathway forward to bring albedo technologies and projects to the fore. This marketplace discussion may not be wholly appropriate for this science based HPAC forum. Yet, commercial participation is absolutely needed, that's where the money's at! Particularly so, as Rober, you point out, that policy debate has been squelched. 

Regards,

Wolf