Decarbonization as a Service

The rise of a decarbonization-as-a-service sector may make it easier to commodify and exchange carbon. But what if it doesn’t actually help address climate change? There is always the risk that the platforms could be algorithmically flawed—that their software isn’t accurately quantifying emissions, whether positive or negative. But there are also d... See more

Getting to net zero matters, but how we get there is just as important. Put another way, different attempts to quantify carbon produce different kinds of social relations. Ceding unilateral control over these choices to corporate platforms—letting them decide which kinds of net-zero social relations to make—would be a significant mistake.

Net zero has gone viral. Everyone is announcing their net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets, from Saudi Arabia to Australia. By the final day of COP26—the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow in 2021—more than 130 countries had made net-zero pledges of one kind or another, representing about 70 percent of the world’s ... See more

We need platforms that monitor our world for the sake of collective management of a shared commons—not platforms that measure our world for the sake of profiting from the data created from it, extracting value from the digital layer the same way that value is extracted from the mines, forests, and soils of our physical world.

The creators of these new platforms believe that they can solve the knowledge problem of net zero with software. Given the proliferation of net-zero pledges, this is a profitable problem to solve. But the platforms all approach this problem in a particular way: they turn carbon into a tradable commodity. This points to a broader point: net zero, in... See more

The knowability of net zero can’t be taken for granted, then. All those policymakers and executives are making net-zero pledges without a clue for how to see them through. How can these pledges possibly be fulfilled? How can the knowledge problem of net zero be solved?

A final problem with a market-based system is that it turns the platforms themselves into black boxes. As profit-seeking enterprises, they must protect their algorithms and data, as otherwise their competitors might gain an advantage. But this opacity obstructs the learning and experimentation process that’s required to combat climate change.

At the center of net zero is a knowledge problem: How do we know when we’ve gotten to net zero? Answering this question is surprisingly hard.

We wouldn’t just be entrusting the platforms with data, however. We would also be entrusting them to play a major role in the governance of ecosystems, with significant social consequences.