If I remember correctly, this was a plot point in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. There are cheaper offsets that are there for the taking, but every company must meet a certain quota, so if you buy the cheap ones, great, but if you hold out and are left with expensive ones that you can’t afford, you are fined, and the money is put into the offsets anyway.

I could be totally misremembering it. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy the book that much.