- What makes Offsetters different from other offset suppliers?
- Why do you focus so much on air travel?
- How do you calculate offsets for my flight?
- Is flying the only activity I need to be concerned about?
- How do you calculate offsets for my vehicle?
- What types of projects do you invest in?
- Do you use tree planting to offset?
- How do you choose which projects to fund?
- Are your offset credits Gold Standard certified?
- How does Offsetters ensure that credits are not double-counted?
What makes Offsetters different from other carbon offset suppliers?
Offsetters is committed to providing a cost effective, sustainable, and efficient solution to the growing community of people and companies who want to take responsibility for their contribution to climate change. 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.
Our role is to help you realize the magnitude of GHG emissions associated with various activities, and to strategically invest the monies from your offset purchases into high quality carbon offsets.
Our approach to carbon management for individuals and businesses looking to reduce their climate impact is:
- Understand your carbon footprint;
- Reduce emissions wherever possible; and
- Offset direct carbon emissions that cannot be reduced or eliminated.
Why do you focus so much on air travel?
Air travel currently accounts for about 3% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but aviation emissions are increasing by roughly 3% every year. Furthermore, the altitude at which airplanes emit CO2 and other GHG emissions and water vapour into the air makes air travel particularly damaging to the planet.
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.
How do you calculate offsets for my flight?
The calculations we use to determine GHG emissions from air travel 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 rate 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.
Is flying the only activity I need to be concerned about?
No. Many other activities release greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well: heating our homes, using fossil fuel-generated electricity, driving cars, and many industrial processes are all major sources of emissions. See the Offset Now page for options to offset your lifestyle and vehicle emissions, or call us for help calculating and offsetting your business emissions.
How do you calculate offsets for my vehicle?
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. 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 further affect your fuel use.
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 ratios used by Government of Canada, 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.
What types of projects do you invest in?
Offsetters primarily invests in energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. We enable commercial and industrial property owners to install low GHG emitting systems in place of traditional systems with high GHG emissions by investing the difference in cost between the systems. Because the low GHG system would not have been selected without our support, this investment is an offset.
We invest in projects that focus on permanent reductions of greenhouse gases through energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Our projects can be found throughout British Columbia and across Canada. We work with our project partners (businesses, community organizations, etc.) to find ways of lowering the emissions from their operations.
Our team also sources credits from international Gold Standard or Voluntary Carbon Standard projects around the world. To date, our international investments have been made in collaboration with other offset providers.
We currently have over 40 active projects, and we have many more on the drawing board. See here for more information about projects that have happened with our investment.
Every project is validated and verified by qualified third parties.
Clean technology projects may include:
- Biomass gasification systems for renewable heat and power production;
- Manufacturing of cellulosic ethanol (biofuel made from wood debris);
- Proton exchange membrane hydrogen fuel cell technology;
- Computer-controlled hybrid fossil fuel and electric building heating systems.
Do you use tree planting to offset?
There are many good reasons to plant trees, but their net benefit as a carbon offset is problematic thus Offsetters does not invest in tree-planting projects. Tree planting as a long-term solution to GHG management faces a number of challenges:
- Afforestation and reforestation initiatives 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 as an offset project typically treats the amount of carbon that a tree absorbs over its entire life as the amount of GHG emissions removed from the atmosphere. These credits are sold in advance of when the actual emission reduction takes place; this is problematic since if the tree is cut down or dies, it will fail to deliver the original amount of emissions reductions that were originally sold.
There are a number of other reasons why we don’t use tree planting including the scientific uncertainty of the amount of carbon absorption from trees, and the fact that tree planting is already a well-established practice in Canada thus tree planting projects would fail to meet the basic additionality criterion of a high quality offset.
How do you choose which projects to fund?
Our 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.
Are your credits Gold Standard certified?
Offsetters purchases and sells Gold Standard credits that are sourced from projects around the world. The Gold Standard certification is only available to projects in developing countries; therefore, our domestic projects are not eligible for Gold Standard certification. Gold Standard projects in the 2010 Legacy Portfolio include projects in New Zealand, Turkey, Uganda, China and India, and beyond.
In addition, we develop our own projects domestically, including fuel-switching projects, energy efficiency projects, and ground-source heat-pump installations. Our domestic projects are developed to the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) or the BC Emissions Offset Regulation. Our domestic projects developed prior to these standards also meet these best in class standards.
How does Offsetters ensure that credits are not double-counted?
Double counting occurs when multiple parties take credit for the environmental attribute of a carbon reduction. This would occur, for example, if a company reduces its emissions and applies the reduction toward its emissions targets or a carbon neutral goal, but also sells the credits to a second user. Both the company and the second user would be claiming these emissions.
This is a major problem in the carbon market. To address this issue, we keep careful track of our credits internally and register each of our credits on registries such as APX, Markit and the Gold Standard Registry. These registries track each carbon credit that has been created and retires them from the market once they are sold. For added assurance, buyers can then check to make sure that the credits they are about to buy have not already been sold or used.