Erasing Your Carbon Conscience

Carbon offsetting offers people a means to compensate for the carbon emissions they produce through energy consumption. Around 40% of the UKs carbon dioxide emissions are produced through electricity consumption in home. This means that every individual has a carbon footprint to offset.

The way carbon offsetting works is by paying a company to invest in renewable energy or energy efficiency schemes, which will reduce carbon emissions by the same amount as the carbon levels which an individual or business has produced.

Each individual should, of course, aim not to produce the carbon debt in the first place; there is nothing more effective in the fight against climate change than turning off unnecessary lights, making sure you dont leave your appliances on standby and using less electricity to heat your homes by making sure they are properly insulated. However, for the energy consumption that it is impossible to live without, offsetting is one way of paying back your debt.

There are many schemes which advertise offsetting programs, but ones which invest in renewable energy or energy efficient projects, which can prove what they say they are doing are generally more recommended by environmental watch-dogs.

Many companies advertise tree-planting schemes or development of bio-energy or gas capture initiatives, but energy watchdogs suggest these are not the best organisations in which to invest since they do not aid the development of the infrastructure we need for a low carbon future.

There are number of accreditation bodies whose markers you can look for to ensure that you are supporting a legitimate offsetting scheme. These include:

DEFRAs Code of Best Practice (launched in June 2008) which gives a Quality Mark to show that a company has met the Government United Nations standards for being a reliable offset scheme.

And, The Gold Standard, which identifies offset projects that meet good sustainability standards, deliver benefits to local communities and are based on energy efficiency or renewable energy and has been created by environmental groups.