Carbon Offsets: Greening or Greenwash?

Over the past few years, there have been increasing reports of organisations going 'carbon neutral' and schemes are mushrooming offering individuals to offset their personal emissions - see for example 'eleven trees to buy a green conscience'. It is, however, not always clear 'what emission-free really means'. And some schemes fail to provide sufficient guarantees that projects financed by the scheme actually reduce emissions to the amounts claimed.

In a recent document, the Carbon Trust presented a 3-stage approach for a carbon offsetting strategy:

• firstly, focus on direct emissions
• secondly, look at reducing indirect emissions
• then, consider developing an offset strategy, but ensure that only high quality offsets are purchased

The report includes validity tests for verification, additionality, leakages, impermanency and double-counting.