Climate change and cutting your carbon emissions
Carbon offsetting
How does offsetting work?
The government encourages businesses to measure, and where possible avoid and reduce emissions. This can also help your business save energy and money in the longer term. However, there are emissions that cannot be avoided, and businesses may wish to balance the impact of such emissions through the purchase of carbon offsets.
Offsetting involves paying someone, somewhere else, to save emissions equivalent to those you have produced. These emissions savings (or 'carbon credits') come from a variety of projects in a number of different of countries. However, you should remember that offsetting alone will not necessarily make your company carbon neutral.
How can you check the quality of offset products?
To help you choose good quality offsets the government has developed a quality assurance scheme for carbon offsetting. This helps you to be sure that the offset you buy is legitimate and not a waste of money. To be approved under the scheme the offset provider must:
- calculate your emissions accurately
- sell good quality carbon credits from projects that comply with the Kyoto Protocol and have been verified by the United Nations
- deliver these credits within a year of your buying them
- declare clearly how much the credits cost per tonne
- provide you with information about the role of offsetting in tackling climate change and advice on how to reduce your carbon footprint
You can identify approved offsets by checking that the correct quality mark is on the offset provider's website and in their literature.
Some providers will sell offsets both with and without the quality mark. This does not mean that the offsets without the quality mark are necessarily of poor quality. Instead, it means that the government cannot vouch for the quality of those offsets, perhaps because of the type of emission credits they use. If you intend to purchase offsets not covered by the quality mark, you should take the time to check that you are confident that the offsets represent real, independently verified emission reductions or offer other benefits (such as environmental or social) that you would like to support.
Subjects covered in this guide
- Introduction
- How climate change affects your business
- How to cut carbon emissions from energy use
- How to cut carbon emissions from business travel
- How to cut carbon emissions from business buildings
- How to design low-carbon products
- How to find suppliers of low-carbon products
- Tax breaks to encourage environmentally-friendly practices
- Make the most of emissions trading
- Carbon offsetting
Carbon Trust Advice Line
0800 085 2005
Actions
- Carbon offset targets on the Defra website - Opens in a new window
- Carbon footprint calculators on the Carbon Trust website - Opens in a new window
- Energy reduction resources on the Carbon Trust website - Opens in a new window
- View local and national events linked to this topic
