Have you ever tried to calculate how many trees would be needed to offset the pollution of just one car? Now imagine doing the same calculation for the fossil fuel reserves of ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and 197 other oil giants. The result will leave you speechless. A team of British and French researchers have done just that: they have put on paper the real costs of carbon offsetting. The numbers are mind-boggling, I'll show them to you in a box in the article, and they personally lead me to a conclusion: the whole “compensation” thing is a huge joke. I'll tell you better.
A forest as big as a continent
Nina Friggens of the University of Exeter and Alain Naef of the ESSEC Business School in Paris have published on Communications Earth & Environment a study that brutally scales down our illusions about green remedies. To offset emissions from fossil fuel reserves of the 200 largest companies in the sector, a forest of 9,5 million square kilometers would be needed. To give you an idea of its size: larger than the whole of North America.
“We need to be careful as a society to think that we can continue to burn fossil fuels and compensate for them later,” explains Dr. Friggens. The picture that emerges is increasingly unsustainable, and the numbers demonstrate this with relentless clarity.
Fossil Reserves: The Math That Doesn't Add Up
The 200 largest companies in the sector hold approximately 200 billion tons of carbon in their reserves. If all this material were burned, it would generate 742 billion tons of CO2. This far exceeds the 400 billion tons of carbon budget remaining to limit warming to 1,5 degrees.
But the real shocker comes when it comes to costs. Reforestation compensation would cost oil companies about $10,8 trillion. That's equivalent to 11% of global GDP. As I have already pointed out in the past, the fossil fuel industry faces increasingly insurmountable economic challenges. And it pays with mere talk this debt that it knows it can no longer honor.
The limits of carbon offsetting
Reforestation remains the cheapest offset strategy available. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates a cost of about $14,5 per ton of CO2 offset. But even this “convenient” figure becomes prohibitive when multiplied by the quantities involved.
By comparison, direct air capture (a technology that extracts CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it underground) would cost about $908 per ton. The final bill for oil companies would rise to $673,7 trillion, or 700% of global GDP.
The study's mathematics reveals an uncomfortable reality: oil companies may have “net negative environmental ratings.” In other words, they might be worth less than what they should pay to offset their climate impact.
Lucy Hutyra of Boston University, who was not involved in the study, calls the research "an interesting experiment that highlights the enormous social and economic costs associated with burning fossil fuels." The researcher emphasizes, however, that the study adopts a maximalist approach, assuming that all emissions must be offset exclusively through reforestation. We already know that this is not enough, and that it will also take new technologies: but do we have them?
Fossil Reserves: Beyond Compensation
The researchers, of course, are not suggesting abandoning reforestation altogether. “It can work and have climate, cultural, social and biodiversity benefits,” Friggens points out. But the main message remains crystal clear: fossil reserves must remain underground. There is no way to extract them and then “compensate”. We need to stop extracting fossil fuels, plant new forests and reduce CO2 emissions. Simple. Brutal, if you like, but there is nothing else. A lesson that This applies to both companies and individuals..
This research presents us with a mathematical truth: we cannot plant trees fast enough to keep up with fossil fuel extraction. The path to climate is through bolder choices: leaving oil, gas, and coal where nature put them. Underground. Period.
