Carbon Offsetting

 "Carbon offsetting" is a booming business. It is now straightforward to go online and calculate the carbon footprint caused by your transatlantic flight, or heating your home for a year, then pay a company to "offset" your emissions by reducing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Carbon offsetting alone is not a solution to climate change, and is criticised by many who see it as an ‘easy way out', making people and businesses less likely to take action to reduce emissions in the first place. The advice from the UK government, and from most carbon offsetting companies, is that reducing energy consumption is the best way to lower your impact on the environment, but carbon offsetting is a good way of compensating for necessary emissions. 

What do carbon offsetting companies do?

Key questions to ask carbon offsetting companies are:

1. Where does my money go?

Most companies use your money to fund projects that include tree-planting, increasing energy efficiency and development of alternative/renewable energy sources. Find out exactly which projects they fund - the more information they give you the better, so you can be confident the money is genuinely helping to reduce greenhouse gas levels in the long term. For example, some tree-planting projects have been criticised as they disrupt local communities and ecosystems, and carbon soaked up by trees will eventually be released back into the air when the tree dies or is burned.

2. Would the emissions reduction project have happened without my donation?

You need to make sure you are not paying for something that would have happened anyway. The money donated should lead to emissions reductions that would not have occurred during ‘business as normal'.

Good carbon offsetting websites should address these concerns, as well as helping you to reduce your carbon footprint using other methods. Voluntary carbon offsetting is currently unregulated, so it is hard to verify that your money is being used exactly as you hope. The UK government is currently (early 2007) introducing standards for the industry, although some say these standards will lead to increased prices.

How are governments and industries offsetting their carbon?

The Kyoto protocol (an international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions) has led to the regulated international carbon trade, where carbon ‘credits' are bought and sold by countries/businesses that are over or under their emissions quota. Alternatively, energy efficiency/alternative energy projects (usually in developing countries) are funded by those with quotas to reach, to help offset their emissions.

Carbon credits generated by voluntary offsetting should not be ‘counted twice' (ie. they should not contribute to required national emissions quotas). This is one reason why so many carbon offsetting projects occur in developing countries that do not have emissions quotas.

It should not matter where in the world the project occurs - greenhouse gases mix freely and so increasing the energy efficiency of hotels in India could compensate for heating a house in the UK.

Large companies are increasingly claiming to be ‘carbon neutral', or at least on their way there. However, it is important to know how carbon neutrality is achieved - making the effort to reduce energy consumption is a much better option than purely offsetting emissions.

Is carbon offsetting a good thing?

Carbon offsetting is certainly a good thing if it raises awareness of the environmental impact caused by our own houses, cars and jetset lifestyles. Supporting projects that increase energy efficiency and improve alternative energy sources would also seem to be a good thing.

However, you need to be confident that money paid to offset your own emissions will genuinely lead to a reduction in greenhouse gases, which would not have happened anyway.

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