Why offsets make a difference to climate change and how to use them responsibly

Responsible offsetting

Independent guidelines have been produced by organisations including the Carbon Trust and the Financial Times to enable entities to use offsets in a responsible and effective way. At a minimum, as a general guideline, we suggest the following:

• Avoid/reduce first. Develop a carbon footprint and evaluate and implement all feasible opportunities to avoid/ reduce emissions that are available prior to using any offsets
• Only purchase robust and independently audited offsets. Only purchase offsets created by "robust" green projects that have the following features:
  • Additionality. The projects must be validated as being "additional" to business-as-usual
  • Best practice and validation.Projects must be independently validated as being compliant with one of the best practice standards for developing offset projects (e.g. Voluntary Carbon Standard, Gold Standard, CDM or JI)
  • Verification. The annual emission savings created by the project must also be independently verified.

CarbonAided

CarbonAided develops and markets Kyoto and voluntary offset projects that deliver real savings in GHG emissions. An ethical business with strict codes of conduct, we take exceptional steps to ensure that our emissions offsets are additional to "business- as-usual" and are independently verified. Each project is compliant with at least one of the key standards for offset projects:

• CDM or JI
• Voluntary Carbon Standard
• Gold Standard

Our projects include activities that improve the standard of living of the World's poor. We also develop large projects that play a significant role in the global fight against climate change and promote low carbon innovation.