As part of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy, the Prime Minister has made a commitment to offset all emissions arising from official and ministerial air travel.
To meet this commitment, the Government developed a Government Carbon Offsetting Facility (GCOF) in November 2007, to help central Government Departments offset their travel emissions in a simple, cost effective way.
GCOF, managed by EEA Fund Management, bought offset credits called Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) from a range of small-scale projects, with additional sustainable development benefits, under the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
The total number of CERs purchased amounted to 305,000, all supplied by Trading Emissions Plc. These offset the total air travel emissions of participating Government Departments for three years, from 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2009.
The new GCOF contract – GCOF II
DECC launched the second phase of the Government’s Carbon Offsetting Facility (GCOF II) in partnership with the UK Government's procurement agency, Buying Solutions in January 2010 with a press notice and letter to CEOs of public sector organisations.
GCOF II is designed to cover Government air travel emissions from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2012, and is available for all of the public sector to offset emissions from a variety of sources. GCOF II has been developed in conjunction with other Government Departments and public sector bodies as a multiple supplier framework agreement. Ten suppliers were awarded places on the framework agreement (listed in alphabetical order):
To reflect recent market developments, the GCOF II contract will enable the Government to buy Gold Standard CERs or CERs which offer equivalent benefits to the Gold Standard. This ensures that the high standard of credits purchased in GCOF I is maintained in GCOF II. The offsets provided by Buying Solutions under GCOF II are also approved under the Government’s quality assurance scheme for carbon offsetting.
Guidance on carbon offsetting and how to use GCOF II is also available for public sector organisations.
While most Departments participated in GCOF I, others, such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, had organised their own offsetting schemes. It is expected that all Departments will participate in GCOF II.
Details of the CDM projects supported by GCOF and statistics on Government offsetting are available here:
Note: GCOF originally stood for 'Government Carbon Offsetting Fund' but the name was changed to 'Government Carbon Offsetting Facility' in September 2009 to reflect the change in type of contract from GCOF I to GCOF II.