The fact is many members of the corporate sector are on board implementing CO2 emission programs and achieving remission results. How can that not be positive?
You raise a lot of fair points which would require a separate thread to deal with the issues that lie below the headlines. A few general comments:
1) Energy efficiency measures can reduce CO2 but the scope of savings are limited since there is already an economic incentive to avoid wasting energy. If energy is "wasted" is often because the cost of stopping the waste exceeds the cost of wasted energy.
2) Beware of touting biomass power since that often means chopping down low grade forest in NA or Russia and turning it into pellets to burn in Europe. Headlines on small scale methane capture tend to obscure where the majority of biomass power comes from and it is often a long way from carbon neutral.
3) Emissions trading schemes are largely scams and often do not represent real emissions reductions. They are simply accounting tricks. In some cases, unnecessary facilities in places like China are built simply to collect money selling credits when the facility is close and/or upgraded.
4) Don't be fooled by carbon capture claims because true permanent, large scale carbon capture (i.e. create limestone from CO2) takes a lot of energy because they involve reversing the chemical processes that release the CO2 in the first place. The need to consume as much as 25-30% of energy produced to capture CO2 makes it very hard to do cheaply no matter what headlines might say. Capturing CO2 in underground bunkers (they leak) or by planting trees (they eventually die) are not truly sustainable solutions.