From ethical investing to green energy, our ethical money section has all the information you need to get the best deal for you and your conscience!
Carbon offsetting
Moneyfacts Ethical best buys:
Carbon offsetting, according to ClimateCare.co.uk, means paying someone to reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on your behalf. Carbon offsetting means you can in effect offset the carbon dioxide that you have created every time you heat your home, take a flight or drive your car.
Climate Care enables carbon offsetting by funding projects to help fund transition to a lower-carbon world. Investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency and forest restoration can help to replace non-renewable fuel, reduce the amount of fuel needed in the first place and help absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as trees grow.
Climate Care’s website lets you calculate your carbon profile and then helps you buy carbon offsets. You can even buy goods and services with carbon offsetting built into the price.
Major concerns
- Friends of the Earth recently expressed some major concern over the environmental credibility of many carbon-offsetting projects. Many schemes and carbon offset products involve planting trees, however, trees can die and large-scale plantations can reduce biodiversity and end up displacing large groups of people.
- In fact some tree planting projects in Guatemala, Ecuador and Uganda have been accused of disrupting water supplies; evicting thousands of villagers from their land; seizing grazing rights from farmers; and releasing more carbon from the soil than absorbed by the trees themselves.
Smoke screen
- Friends of the Earth are also concerned that carbon offsetting is being used as a smoke screen to delay cutting emissions and adopting low carbon alternatives. There is no real solution to climate change other than to emit less pollution in the first place.
Last resort
- Some companies should be commended though. Those companies who have carried out a comprehensive audit of their carbon footprint across all of their operations, taken every effort to reduce emissions, invested in low carbon technologies and, as a last resort, offset any emissions that remain are the ones we should commend.
Pinch of salt
- However, “Carbon neutral” is a marketing message. It’s designed to appeal to a growing number of climate conscious consumers but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee effective action by companies to reduce emissions.
The problem with carbon offsetting is twofold:
- These schemes are unregulated and wide open to abuse e.g. here’s nothing to stop a company making widely exaggerated carbon cuts or charging hugely inflated prices;
- Even the most well-intended schemes suffer from a basic weakness – it requires an accurate measure of the emissions to be offset and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found the margin of error on measuring emissions to be between 10% and 100%!
- Throwing your own money at carbon offsetting is not the answer. You need to reduce the amount of CO2 you create in the first place. For those elements that you can’t reduce e.g. taking a long haul flight for example, don’t waste your money on a carbon offsetting website, do something different.
- Why not invest some of your savings in a renewal energy project instead, which in theory should stop pollution being created in the first place. Triodos Bank offers a wide range of eco-friendly savings and investment products that are worth considering.
- Alternatively, why not support practical projects like helping poorer communities get access to safe, clean renewable energy for example. Setting up a regular monthly direct debit with organisations like Friends of the Earth, Oxfam or The Woodland Trust are a good place to start and will make more of a difference than throwing away twenty quid to a carbon offsetting website.
