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A “carbon offset” (aka a carbon credit, a VER, or a CER) occurs when an individual or organization emits a given amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) but invests in measures that will pull the equivalent volume of GHG out of the atmosphere or prevent other emissions from taking place at all. Carbon offsets are a financial instrument representing this reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Although there are many kinds of GHG’s, offsets are measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent for simplicity (i.e., all other gases are converted to equivalent amounts of C02). -
No. Voluntary carbon offsets are an unregulated market at present. Many projects promoted as “offsets” today fail to meet the basic standards of additionality and permanence. Remember that if a project would have taken place even without your investment, then you cannot claim it as an offset.
All offsetters projects are third-party verified to be additional, real, and permanent. We invest in energy efficiency projects that reduce the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.
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Definitely not! We encourage every individual, family, and organization to adopt environmentally friendly practices: walking or cycling instead of driving; teleconferencing instead of flying; etc. But there are still many activities for which we do not yet have low GHG alternatives. Offsetting is one way individuals and companies can actively contribute to sustainability by taking responsibility for their impacts.
Tracking the climate cost of one’s practices (in both tonnes of emissions and in dollars) leads to awareness and awareness leads to changed behaviour. When we know how much we emit, and how much it’s costing us, we act to reduce it.
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Air travel currently accounts for about 3% of global CO2 emissions, but airplane emissions are increasing by about 3% every year. Furthermore, the altitude at which airplanes emit CO2, other greenhouse gases, and water vapour into the air makes air travel particularly damaging to the atmosphere.
While the per kilometre emissions (per traveler) of a jet plane are not dramatically higher than those of a car, the challenge is that a single cross-continent trip is almost half of the distance that the average car travels in a year! Plane travel allows us to live a truly global lifestyle, but it has truly global impacts as well.
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Your offset purchase, pooled with other buyers of offsets from Offsetters, directly results in reduced GHG emissions. We invest your money in projects which reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions entering the atmosphere in the first place (NOT by sucking them out of the atmosphere via tree planting or other means). Furthermore, with every project we will demonstrate the feasibility and environmental and social benefit of emerging energy saving technologies.
So your investment not only offsets your own emissions but also promotes the mainstream adoption of alternative energy systems that do not rely upon high consumption of fossil fuel.
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No. Many other activities release greenhouse gasses as well: heating our homes, using fossil-fuel generated electricity, driving cars and many industrial processes are all major sources of emissions. Go to the Offset Now page for options to offset your lifestyle and vehicle emissions or call us to help calculate and offset your business emissions.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (who recently won a nobel prize for their work) estimates that in order to stabilize the earth’s climate we need to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 80% by 2050.
To do this, we need to bring about lasting change. The projects we initiate and promote not only deliver GHG reductions of 80% or more, but are economically attractive in the long run and will sustain themselves once established.
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For businesses, climate change can be a reputation risk to your company: high emitters face pressure to reduce emissions; companies that rely heavily upon transportation to get their goods to market face both rising costs but also new types of questions from their customers.
For forward-looking firms and organizers, addressing the climate impact of your business or event can lead to opportunities and benefit.
Go to our Consulting page to find out more about how Offsetters can help your business face these new challenges.
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An Offsetters high quality offset project has five (5) key traits:
* It is “additional”: Offsetters investments lead to real reductions in total greenhouse gas emissions by enabling projects that would otherwise not take place. Many non-Offsetters projects fail to meet this test.
* It meets or exceeds Canadian standards: Our projects meet or exceed Canadian environmental and social standards. Many non-Offsetters projects (e.g., pig farms in Latin America) would fail Canadian standards in animal care and water pollution prevention.
* It is verified by a third party engineering firm to have produced the emissions that we claim it has: Our clients can feel confident that their contribution has measurable benefit.
* It provides lasting environmental benefit: We favour energy efficiency technologies and renewable energy over tree planting. We can measure how much greenhouse gas savings are created in energy efficiency and renewable projects.
* It is socially beneficial: Offsetters projects bring social benefits as well as environmental gains. This ensures that there is social desire to sustain them in the long run. -
The first screen is that we only invest in high quality offset projects with verifiable climate benefits.
Our domestic (Canadian) projects are focused on energy efficiency (e.g. efficient lighting and ground-source heat pumps) and renewable energy (e.g. biodiesel).
We are always interested in exploring new high quality offset projects. If you would like to know more about applying to Offsetters for project funds, please email us at info@offsetters.ca.
Our Gold Standard and other international projects have been managed by ClimateCare (www.climatecare.org) and First Climate (www.firstclimate.com), both renowned European-based organizations.
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There are many good reasons to plant trees, but their net benefit as carbon offsets is problematic. Trees certainly do capture CO2 from the atmosphere, but tree planting as a long-term solution to GHG management faces two challenges:
* Reforestation initiates do not meet the permanence requirement: forests release their stored CO2 back into the atmosphere when they die, are harvested, or burn. This challenge is accentuated by climate change itself, which is changing the ecosystems to which tree species are adapted, leading to disease, infestation, and new fire patterns.
* Tree planting is already well established and well funded. It is not clear that additional funds provided to tree planting (especially in Canada) will lead to any additional GHG reductions. -
Offsetters provides a cost effective, simple and efficient method to reduce the negative climate impacts of our daily lives. Every offset purchase not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but also contributes to sustainable development and improved livability through the projects that we invest in. We are committed to providing sustainable, efficient and cost effective solutions to the growing community of people and companies who are actively taking responsibility for their impacts.
Our role is three fold:
* To help you realize the magnitude of GHG emissions associated with various activities;
* To identify, initiate and attain third party verification for projects that pass our criteria for offset quality; and
* To strategically invest the monies from your offset purchases in these projects. -
Businesses can write off offset payments as part of their cost of doing business. Because we are not a registered charity, however, we cannot issue you a tax receipt.
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At Offsetters, we believe that your purchase of offsets should do more than just offset your direct emissions. It should also promote the mainstream adoption of next generation energy systems to get us out of the fossil fuel dependent energy systems we have today. For this reason, all Offsetters funds are invested in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects that would not have taken place without our involvement.
Visit our Projects page to learn about our Domestic and International Projects in more detail.
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In general, we pool your money to fund a portfolio of domestic projects which reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This allows us to best manage our GHG reduction commitments, by balancing cost (some projects are more expensive per tonne of CO2 than others but generate a wider range of sustainability benefits) and risk (some projects offer great rewards but carry an irreducible risk of not delivering as much emission reductions as expected).
We also offer international Gold Standard certified offsets. Please write to us at info@offsetters.ca to purchase these offsets.
If you are a company in a position to offset a large number of emissions (>10,000 tonnes), we can match your funds with a particular project.
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You can be confident that purchase of an Offsetters carbon offset will achieve the promised emissions reduction because we have dramatically shortened the supply chain from investor (you) to project. Unlike many offset providers, which outsource project management or purchase offsets on the open market, we play a hands-on role in all of our domestic projects, ensuring that they are implemented as proposed and that projected GHG savings are realized.
All of our projects also exceed the Canadian standards for offsets, and are consistant with the Voluntary Carbon Standard and Gold Standard requirements for offset quality.
Third party engineering firms verify each of our projects to confirm that the emissions have actually taken place.
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We have a portfolio of projects, some less expensive, some more. But the combined purchasing power of all of our members gives us considerable financial power.
There are important factors that underlie the affordability of our high quality offsets:
* Offsetters pays just the incremental (not total) cost of renewable energy and/or energy efficient systems over traditional systems. Our investments are used to tip the balance to make clean energy projects cost effective for the project proponent, thus meeting our “additionality” requirement. In some cases our investment leverages other funds, making this even more cost effective.
* Once installed, alternative energy systems will reduce emissions for their entire installed life. For example, installing a ground-source heatpump in lieu of a gas furnace in a housing complex leads to energy cost savings of 70% and GHG reductions of 80%. Because the system can be expected to last at least 15 years, the total GHG savings of the heatpump system are vast relative to our initial investment. -
The calculations we use are based on a report on the climate impacts of aviation by the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University - Aviation Emissions and Offsets. Four factors are assessed in our calculator:
* The fuel consumption rate of the aircraft being used.
* The seats occupied and freight on-board;
* The overall impact of GHG emissions in the stratosphere (i.e. a multiplier for the altitude at which emissions are released); and
* The distance flown.Thus, in calculating emissions for a passage on long haul flight we take the average fuel burn figures for a Boeing 747 and an Airbus A360 as published by the EU. We divide this by the average total number of seats (not occupied seats). We then subtract fuel use for freight carried on the average long haul aircraft. GHG impacts in the upper atmosphere are estimated to be double the amount of CO2 emissions. We double the fuel CO2 and finally multiply this GHG emission rates by the great-circle distance between departure and arrival airports.
For short haul flights we use a similar method to the above, but use the fuel consumption for a Boeing 737 as the reference aircraft.
As we gain access to more sophisticated databases on aircraft serving each route and the number of seats occupied we will continually refine our calculator to reflect emissions associated with your flight.
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When you buy an offset, the price will be determined by two factors:
* The amount of CO2 that is calculated from your activity; and
* The cost of the project supported per tonne of GHG avoided.The CO2 emissions calculation will vary slightly according to the assumptions made in the methodology. The main difference is more likely to be the price of the offsets being sponsored. As noted elsewhere in these FAQ, we are proud of the quality of offsets and efficiency of our operations.
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By purchasing from Offsetters, you’ll get all of the following:
* The good feeling of taking action towards mitigating a serious environmental problem, and the right to demand that others do the same;
* A confirmation of purchase from PayPal to the email you provide; and
* An E-certificate verifying the amount of CO2 your purchase has removed from the atmosphere and showing that you are part of a growing community of people and companies which is actively taking responsibility for its actions. -
Both international emission reductions and those in Canada lead to a lowering of Canada’s emissions inventory.
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Certainly! Global warming is a global problem and its impacts are not limited to any geographic boundary. You can purchase from Offsetters online with your credit card or PayPal account, no matter where you live.
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The statistics used by Offsetters Car Calculator for the CoolDrivePass program were taken from the Fuel Consumption Guide published by Natural Resources Canada, and are reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada. The pdf files of fuel consumption data for all cars sold in Canada can be found on the website of the Office of Energy Efficiency at http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/tools/fuelratings/fuel-consumption.cfm?attr=8.
The fuel consumption of your vehicle may differ from its published rating, depending on factors such as driving style, vehicle acceleration, driving speed, the overall age and operating condition of the vehicle, temperature, weather, traffic and road conditions. In addition, power-driven accessories (e.g., air conditioning) that are installed in your vehicle will also affect your fuel use.
The fuel consumption ratings are presented in accordance with vehicle make, model, engine size, type of transmission, and fuel type. Annual fuel consumption and CO2 estimates are based on the Government of Canada's used ratio of 55% city to 45% highway driving. Offsetters uses Natural Resources Canada’s CO2 emission factors of 2.4 kgCO2e/L for gasoline and 2.7 kgCO2e/L for diesel fuel. For ethanol-blended gasoline vehicles (E85), Offsetters uses an emissions factor of 2.3 kgCO2e/L.