Dispute Over Counting Forest Carbon Roils Global Standard-Setter

(Bloomberg) — A scientist has resigned from the World Resources Institute amid disagreement over how to tally forest carbon in accounting rules that are under development. Those rules, which are being drafted by Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) — a global standard-setting body overseen in part by the non-profit — will shape how companies in the forest industry report their carbon footprints.

Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, told Bloomberg News and non-profit newsroom SourceMaterial that he will be leaving his role as technical director of land-related issues at the World Resources Institute this month because of what he said are shortcomings in the GHG Protocol’s process in drawing up the new rules.

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“As technical director, my charge is to ensure the scientific integrity of WRI’s work related to land use,” Searchinger said. “Because developments with the Protocol undermine that integrity in both substance and process with large potential consequences, and because I was unable to correct them, I have resigned.”

Danny Cullenward, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, stepped down from his seat on the body’s Independent Standards Board in June over the same issue.

The resignation comes as the group deals with another battle over potential changes to how businesses report their emissions from electricity they purchase. Earlier this year, a group of large companies, including Apple and Amazon, lobbied the GHG Protocol to make it optional to comply with stricter standards under consideration for Scope 2 emissions reporting.

The argument centers on two competing approaches to calculate carbon stores and emissions from forests.

Both approaches seek to account for how forests absorb, store and release carbon, but they differ in how those changes should be attributed. Activity-based accounting seeks to distinguish changes caused by humans from those resulting from natural processes. The managed land proxy approach instead generally treats any changes on managed forest land as the result of human activity.

Some experts have raised concerns that managed land proxy would allow companies to essentially double count carbon removals and take credit for those occurring naturally, regardless of their business operations.

“We are extremely opposed to the application of [managed land proxy] in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol because it will result in the opposite of what it tries to do, which is climate change mitigation,” said Miguel Mendonça Reis Brandão, who served on the body’s technical working group for forest carbon accounting and is associate professor of industrial ecology and life cycle assessment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. “It’s counterproductive.”