Task Guide

CLIMATE ACTION
The basics of carbon offsetting

What is this task?

Read the guide to help you understand the basics of carbon offsetting.

Why do this task?

To better understand how carbon offsetting can be used as part of your journey to neutralise your
carbon footprint.

Who should do this task?

A sustainability officer, in coordination with your finance team.

When do this task?

This will be an ongoing task until your business reaches net-zero, or net-positive!

How to do this task?

Use this guide to assess how you can offset your emissions if mitigation is not possible.

Happy learning.
 The basics of carbon offsetting

What is carbon offsetting?

Carbon offsetting encompasses a series of actions taken to compensate for and reduce greenhouse gas
emissions arising from human activity, and making equivalent reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in
the atmosphere. Carbon offsetting is a tool that can be used to reach net-zero emissions across the globe.
Through carbon markets, individuals and corporations can neutralize—or offset—their emissions by investing in
emissions avoidance or reductions, or in projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere (sequestration).

Offset disclaimer!
Carbon offsetting is a useful tool for managing your carbon footprint, a good way of motivating your business
to measure your carbon footprint and to take notice of where emissions are highest. On one hand, offsetting
is beneficial because it reduces carbon emissions that would otherwise not have been reduced. However,
we will only be able to truly reduce global emissions if offsetting is in addition to significant carbon mitigation
measures. To halt global warming, we must stop putting additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Cutting emissions from the source will always be the most effective way of reducing carbon emissions and
runaway climate change. After reducing as much of your organisations emissions at source, offsetting of your
organisation’s remaining emissions is encouraged.

Application in the travel industry

Carbon offsets have long been applied in various ways in the travel industry. This ranges from airlines
offering passengers voluntary offset on the purchase of a ticket to accommodation providers offering
carbon offsets for customer stays. Tour operators are also increasingly looking to offer carbon neutral
itineraries where the carbon emissions of all parts of the itinerary (flights, transfers, accommodation and
activities) are calculated and offset, offering travellers a guilt-free trip.

How does it work?

Carbon credits are typically priced and calculated in terms of how many dollars it costs to reduce carbon (or
other greenhouse gases) in the environment by a tonne . Every tonne of emissions reduced by a project creates
one carbon offset /carbon credit. The price per tonne can vary depending on the quality of the offset.

Verified emission reductions (VERs) or verified carbon units (VCUs) are carbon offsets, carbon credits, carbon
offset credits, or emission reductions from an offset project that’s independently audited against a
third-party verification standard.

The main types of offsetting projects include:

• Reforestation and conservation: Credits are created based on either the carbon captured by new trees,
or the carbon not released through protecting old trees.
• Blue carbon: credits are created by the growth and conservation of carbon-absorbing plants, such as
mangrove forests and their associated marine habitat.
• Renewable energy: credits help to build or maintain chiefly solar, wind or hydro sites across the world;
boosting the amount of renewable energy on the grid, creating jobs, decreasing reliance on fossil fuels.
• Community projects: often help to introduce energy-efficient methods or technology to undeveloped
communities around the world.
• Waste to energy: projects often involve capturing methane and converting it into electricity. Sometimes
this means capturing landfill gas, or in smaller villages, human or agricultural waste. Under-developed,
less developed, undeveloped infers tribes in the amazon that don’t interact with others.

While the terms “carbon credits” and “carbon offsets” are often used interchangeably, they refer to two
distinct products that serve two different purposes.

• Carbon offset is a removal of GHGs from the atmosphere. Carbon offsets are generally transacted on the
voluntary carbon market.
• Carbon credit is a reduction in GHGs released into the atmosphere. Carbon credits are generally
transacted on the carbon compliance market.

For the general business looking to reduce carbon emissions one doesn’t have to be so specific and you
could transact in either market. As a consumer, you’d be transacting in carbon offsets.

Once you have calculated how much you wish to offset and have a budget to purchase your credits,
the next step is finding a reputable provider.
 The basics of carbon offsetting

How to select a carbon offset partner

Once you’ve calculated your carbon footprint*, there are plenty of online resources, (companies, brokers,
individual projects), that sell carbon credits.

All the options consider the following:

Verification and validation

Projects should be third-party verified and validated. All projects should be accredited by internationally
recognized Standards. This means the projects meet rigorous criteria and you can be more assured
that they are legitimate. Seek an offsetting partner that applies one of the following internationally
recognised standards:

• VCS (Verified Carbon Standard)

• Gold Standard
• CCB (Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard)

There are others, but these are long established and well known.

Additionality
Choose a partner who can assure you that all their projects provide ‘additionality’. To check this, make
sure that the project was only made possible by carbon funding. If it would have happened anyway,
it would not meet the Standards.

Type of projects
Steer clear of organisations that promote solely tree planting projects. It is difficult to prove the permanence
of these newly planted trees and they do little to change our reliance on fossil fuels. Forestry projects can be
effective but ensure they go beyond the planting of trees by protecting existing forests and biodiversity, as
well as providing community benefits. Other types of meaningful offset projects include wind farms, as well
as water filter programs which reduce the need to cut down and burning firewood to boil water.

Co-benefits
Assess whether the projects go beyond carbon offsetting. Every project has huge potential to provide
community benefits and biodiversity protection. These impacts are often called co-benefits. Increasingly,
carbon credits are being bundled with water and biodiversity credits.

Retiring offsets
Enquire how they ‘retire’ offsets. All projects should be listed on a registry and offset providers can use these
to ‘retire’ projects and make sure the credits purchased are not resold and double counted towards climate
mitigation. Many offset providers work directly with the projects developers and collaborate with them to
ensure the offsets are retired properly.

Transparency
A reputable partner will have information about their projects, methodologies, and quality assurance
protocols readily accessible on their website and be willing to answer your questions.

Locality
Choosing offset projects in the region in which the business is based is not essential, however the ‘market’,
(customer who offsets), looks more favourably on being able to make a connection between their offset
spend and a project which is closer to home.

What to expect when you choose to offset:
• It may take some time to find a reputable
offsetting agency, especially one local to your
operation.
• Offsetting can be a major administrative task.
• Your financial team may need to help with
compliance and taxes.
• You might want to assign a sustainability
professional to design your offset strategy.
• Watch out for heavy administrative fees if you
are not procuring directly from a project.
• This industry is evolving and changing rapidly
due to high demand; stay up to date by reading
related media
Weeva’s tracking of carbon credits
Weeva has provided a data field ‘carbon credits
procured’ with a unit of measure of CO2e tons in
the Climate Action parameter for you to track your
carbon credits.
When carbon credits are captured you can track
your net greenhouse gas emissions, i.e. your
property’s emissions less the carbon credits you
have procured on the carbon dashboard.
If your property has created carbon credits to sell,
Weeva has a data field to record this, called ‘carbon
credits produced’. If you use these for your own
offsetting (called insetting), the quantity applied
should be captured in the data field ‘carbon credits
procured’ so that you can track your net greenhouse
gas emissions on the carbon dashboard.
Make every bit count.
The basics of carbon offsetting
What are the pros and cons of
carbon offsetting?
Pros
• Gives businesses an opportunity to
reduce their carbon footprint
• Relatively quick and easy to implement
• Encourages businesses to quantify
their carbon emissions
• Projects often do more than just offset
carbon, providing other benefits to
communities and nature
Cons
• Can be deemed as ‘green washing’ if
used improperly
• Does not replace activities that produce
greenhouse gases
• Not an exact science: trading a known
quantity of emissions with an uncertain
quantity of emission reductions
• Many different types and costs of
carbon offsets can be confusing