Carbon offsetting
Emissions off setting (or carbon offsetting) is an activity that allows people to offset their impact on global warming by financing actions that avoid, reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.
carbon off setting is a key part of the solution to climate change: action is needed as soon as possible, and to mitigate one's impact, CO₂ eq offsetting plays a key role. By supporting certified projects, you will be capturing a certain amount of greenhouse gases emitted through your activities, decreasing your impact on the environment.
How is compensation carried out correctly?
Offsetting, to be performed properly, must meet a number of requirements that international standards such as Verified Carbon Standard e Gold Standard define and verify. Amateur solutions that are not certified to these international standards are always to be avoided:
- one should always consider only the CO₂ that has already been avoided/captured (do not project that which will be captured in the future, for example throughout the life of the plant);
- additionality is a key criterion, the project must be developed with the sole purpose of capturing CO₂ and its economic sustainability comes from that. For example, if I consider fruit trees, they were probably planted and are tended to produce fruit and the CO₂ they capture is not really additionality compared to if we had not invested in offsetting, but they would have been there anyway. The difference between planting a tree and offsetting is important to understand. Here it is explained in this article: Tree-washing: difference between tree-planting and offsetting;
- CO₂ that is avoided/captured should not already be accounted for in other carbon budgets (e.g., Italian state, which includes in its budget all forestry on national land);
- project must always contemplate CO₂ management throughout its lifetime to be sure that the captured CO₂ is permanent.
Then there are countless more technical criteria that certified offsetting solutions must fulfil, making them the right solution to make a real impact in the fight against climate change.
What is the difference between compensation and neutralisation?
Offsetting includes within it "carbon removal": a specific emission offsetting activity that involves the removal (or sequestration) of greenhouse gases (typically CO₂) from the atmosphere.
Offsetting through "carbon removal" is called neutralization, as greenhouse gases are directly captured/removed/sequestered from the atmosphere, in a word "neutralized."
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