Climate Offsets Fact Sheet

Sep 4, 2009

Offsets in House-passed legislation

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), H.R. 2454, passed by the House of Representatives in June 2009, provides a maximum of two billion tons of offsets per year for U.S. capped entities to use in lieu of reducing their own emissions.1 This means that offsets effectively increase maximum annual pollution permits by 2 billion tons (cap + 2 billion). The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that ACES will only begin to reduce emissions in 2018 because of projected offset usage. This is too little, too late for our climate-constrained world.