Carbon offsetting

Offsetting your carbon emissions and ensuring the quality of the offset product

Climate change affects us all - you should make sure you are aware of the potential impacts on your business.

There are three key steps you can take to tackle climate change:

• work out your business' carbon emissions - use a carbon footprint calculator on the Carbon Trust website - Opens in a new window or ask a carbon offset provider to help you or do the calculation for you
• reduce your emissions - see our guide on climate change and your business or find advice, support and grants on the Carbon Trust website - Opens in a new window
• offset emissions that you cannot avoid

How does offsetting work?

Despite reducing your emissions, your business will be unable to completely avoid producing emissions. Offsetting can help you reduce the impact of those emissions on climate change.

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 variety of countries. However, you should remember that offsetting will not make your company carbon neutral.

How can you check the quality of offset products?

To help you choose good quality offsets the government is developing a quality assurance scheme for carbon offsetting. This helps you to be sure that the offset product 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 you 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. You can read about accreditation of carbon offset providers on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs website - Opens in a new window.