Greening the Fleet - Carbon offsetting
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Carbon offsetting is the act of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions to compensate for the emissions we produce through daily life, e.g driving, heating your home etc.
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What is carbon offsetting?
Our everyday actions consume energy and produce carbon dioxide emissions, for example driving a car, heating a home or flying. Offsetting is a way of compensating for the emissions produced with an equivalent carbon dioxide saving. Carbon offsetting involves calculating your emissions and then purchasing ‘credits’ from emission reduction projects. These projects have prevented or removed an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide elsewhere. Due to the fact that greenhouse gases have a long life-span and tend to mix evenly in the atmosphere it doesn’t matter where gases are emitted in the world: the effect on climate change is the same. To make up for unavoidable emissions increases, e.g. driving to work, equivalent emissions reductions can be made elsewhere, meaning that the overall effect is zero.
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Benefits of carbon offsetting
Offsetting is a useful element of what we can all do to address climate change for several reasons:
- Providing the means to work out the emissions from our own activities helps raise awareness of our impact on climate change. Combined with reducing our emissions, offsetting can be used to address this impact.
- When done in a robust and responsible way, offsetting leads to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in the area local to the offsetting project, often in developing countries.
- Offsetting projects, such as those approved by the United Nations, provide a mechanism for investment in clean technology in the areas which lack it the most. Such investment can lead to the spread of low-carbon development across entire regions, further reducing climate change impact.
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What actions can be offset?
You can offset the fuel used to power and heat your home or office, and you can also offset transport emissions from road, rail and air travel. It can be for a particular action, for example a car journey, or activities over a period of time, for example a person’s annual mileage.
How can I have confidence in offsetting my carbon emissions, whether personally or for my business?
The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is working on establishing a voluntary Code of Best Practice for the provision of carbon offsetting. The purpose of establishing a Code is to ensure confidence in an emerging market and continued growth of that market through that confidence. A consultation took place early in 2007 and the Code should be published shortly
Offset providers can then apply for accreditation and will be awarded with a quality mark to help consumers to identify offsets that meet Government best practice, DEFRA is aiming to have the first accredited offset providers by Spring 2008, we will provide details of these accredited providers in due course.
Sources of further information
http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/carbonoffset/index.htm
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