> carbon offsets are utter BS

You seem to be mixing green energy and carbon offsets.

I'm not convinced that offsets are complete BS, even though a lot of bullshitting and optimistic metrics are likely involved.

"Additionality" and accurate measurement are usually the big questions. I'm pretty sure many "offsets" are just getting extra money from credit-selling for measures that would be taken anyways because they make economic sense, but in theory, additionality (e.g. by pushing something that wouldn't make economic sense into economic feasibility through the added reward from selling credit) is a requirement for offsets (or at least "high-quality" offsets).

Let's say you go to a third world country where people are cooking with wood on open fireplaces, and start handing out stoves that need 1/3rd of the fuel. (This is actually a real offsetting effort). You've not only improved the lives of those people, but you've also reduced the amount of wood that will be burned (and potentially forest that will be cut for it), which creates a calculable impact.

At least that's the theory. The carbon savings from all of these projects are estimated, and of course everyone involved is incentivized to make the project look successful by overestimating. For example, the cookstove projects' effects are disputed: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/08/10/are-carbon-mark...

Seems like its BS, but lets boil it down to a simple unit example:

Company g pulls 1 unit of electricity from a coal power plant that produces just that 1 unit of electricity. By buying carbon offsets, g indirectly funds a power developer to replace the coal plant with a solar plant.

In this example, offsets produce the same net reduction as building their own solar power plant. As long as you purchase offsets from reputable organizations that require the deployment of proceeds to directly offset carbon that would not otherwise have occurred, then it works.

Power may be fungible, but purchase agreements are less so. Someone has to contract with that coal plant. If nobody is buying from them they have to close. And if there's a lot of companies that want to give themselves a grain paint then there'll also be more demand for renewables than supply and more will have to be built. That is of course entirely dependent on the accounting being done correctly.

Right, that's what microsoft (nicely) says in the blog post, too. Read it! I promise it's interesting.

That's even their reasoning for targeting "net zero" instead. They are actually paying to have carbon removed from the atmosphere, and funding companies who are trying to make that cheaper.