As part of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy in 2005, a committment was made to offset all emissions arising from official and ministerial air travel.
To meet this commitment, a Government Carbon Offsetting Facility (GCOF) was developed in November 2007 to help central Government Departments offset their travel emissions in a simple, cost effective way.
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.
GCOF II has been 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 was 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 enables the public sector organisations to buy Gold Standard Certified Emissions Reductions (CER) credits or CERs which offer equivalent benefits to the Gold Standard. This ensures that the same 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 quality assurance scheme for carbon offsetting.
Guidance on carbon offsetting and how to use GCOF II is also available for public sector organisations.
GCOF II works on a reverse eAuction basis involving the suppliers that were awarded a place on the framework agreement. A reverse eAuction works by Buying Solutions setting a ‘lead price’ for CERs, which is then followed by an electronic process, initially for 30 or 45 minutes, where the suppliers bid against each other to reduce the lead price. The time is extended by shorter set time (usually 5 minutes) every time a supplier bids in the last set time (i.e. 5 minutes), and the process continues until there is one supplier who is prepared to sell the CERs at a lower price than all the other suppliers.
The latest eAuction took place on 23 June 2010, which resulted in a price of £12.21 per CER (excluding VAT), being supplied by First Climate Markets AG. The price provides excellent value for money for Government for the high quality offsets being purchased. Full details of the volumes and breakdown of prices for all of the eAuctions for GCOF II, as well as details of the project supplying the CERs are available from the following links:
GCOF I
The first GCOF contract (GCOF I) was awarded to Trading Emissions plc and its investment adviser EEA Fund Management, and purchased 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 CERs purchased under GCOF I relating to international air travel will be cancelled within a year of their delivery in April 2009. Cancellation means that the credits purchased cannot be sold on or transfers to other organisations, and are therefore taken out of further trading within the carbon market.
While most Departments participated in GCOF I, others, such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, had organised their own offsetting schemes.
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.