Scrutinizing net zero: The legal problems of counting greenhouse gas emissions, removals and offsets together

Net-zero targets play an important role in public and private climate governance. The concept of net zero implies that emissions can be outbalanced by compensatory activities such as greenhouse gas removals and offsetting. However, emissions and compensation measures are not equivalent in terms of their climate impact. The climate benefits of currently available compensation practices are more uncertain and less permanent than the harm caused by emissions. From a legal perspective, two problems can be observed. First, aggregating emissions and non-equivalent compensation measures may violate the requirement that greenhouse gas inventories should be accurate. Second, it may conflict with the principle that only effective mitigation measures should count towards emission reduction targets.