The hierarchy of actions
A hierarchy of actions is recognised to combat the effects of climate change. The public, businesses and the public sector are all urged to take action on their carbon footprint in the following order:
- Calculate – the first action is always to calculate your emissions or the emissions from your organisation. A number of calculators exist – for personal and domestic carbon emissions, the preferred calculator is the ACT ON CO2 Calculator. For organisations, the Carbon Trust has a carbon calculator for businesses. Both calculators use the latest conversion factors and provide advice on how to reduce your emissions.
- Avoid – Once you know what your carbon footprint is you can begin to take comprehensive action on CO2. Many emissions can be avoided in the first place such as by not travelling or turning off equipment when it is not in use. The ACT ON CO2 Calculator and the Carbon Trust can advise on how to avoid emissions.
- Reduce – Once all reasonable actions have been taken to avoid emissions, you should take action to reduce your remaining emissions through efficiency measures. Again, both the ACT ON CO2 Calculator and the Carbon Trust can advise on reducing emissions.
- Offset – Many emissions cannot currently be avoided and whilst reducing other emissions is encouraged as the first step, it is unlikely at present to bring emissions to zero. By offsetting remaining emissions that cannot currently be avoided or reduced, the full effects of those emissions can be mitigated by reductions elsewhere in the world. Credits can be bought to fund reductions in emissions elsewhere in the world. Assured credits are created through a regulated mechanism to ensure that emissions savings as a result of funding through credits are additional and permanent.
Individuals and organisations are urged to follow the hierarchy above, and only use offsetting where emissions are currently unavoidable. Offsetting should never be the first choice option.
What is carbon offsetting?
Everyday actions such as driving a car, heating a home or taking a plane journey consume energy and produce carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change. The main priority is to avoid and reduce these emissions, as much as possible.
Some emissions are unavoidable, however – and carbon offsetting compensates for your unavoidable emissions by paying someone to make an equivalent carbon dioxide saving elsewhere in the world. More and more individuals and businesses are volunteering to offset their emissions. Offsetting is not a “cure” for climate change; the most effective way to combat climate change is to reduce emissions. However, if done in the right way, offsetting can reduce the impact of our actions and help raise awareness of the issue. The cost of offsetting can also incentivise reductions.
- Offsetting involves measuring emissions from our activities, which helps to raise awareness of their impact. Combined with action taken to reduce emissions, carbon offsetting can help to tackle climate change.
- When done in a thorough and responsible way, offsetting projects reduce CO2 emissions by avoiding the release of CO2 that would have otherwise happened. On a global scale, offsetting can help maintain an improved balance between our production and reduction of emissions.
- Carbon offsetting projects approved by the United Nations often substitute fossil fuel power with clean energy sources in developing countries, encouraging investment in new, cleaner technologies. Such projects can also have additional benefits, such as creating local jobs or helping reduce water stress.
To be able to offset, an individual or organisation must have already calculated their emissions to know much many tonnes of CO2 they wish to offset. Once the number of tonnes to be offset is known, credits can be bought from emissions reduction projects for the equivalent amount.
What does offsetting involve?
Carbon offsetting involves the funding of projects which reduce or avoid emissions equivalent to that you have emitted. Funding usually takes the form of purchasing credits which are equivalent to a certain number of emissions reduced or avoided. These carbon savings must be in addition to the savings that would have happened anyway, without the funding.
Projects reducing or avoiding emissions include hydro-electric power stations, biomass generation plants and wind farms.
Projects funded through the Carbon Offsetting Facility (GCOF) are listed on the GCOF Projects page.
The projects selling credits, the emitters buying the credits and the intermediary carbon traders make up the ‘carbon market’.
How can you check the quality of offset products?
Government recommends you look for offset providers that meet the following criteria to help you choose good quality offsets:
- calculate your emissions accurately
- 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
The Government’s Quality Assurance Scheme for carbon offsetting ran from February 2009 to June 2011. The scheme is now closed. Archived pages from the Quality Assurance Scheme are available at the National Archives website.