Buying change: the case for carbon offsets

Transcription

a greenfutures special publication
Offset Positive
Buying change: the case for carbon offsets
Offset essentials
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2 Green Futures January 2011
Every organisation and individual has, like it or not,
a carbon footprint.
Even with the most determined efforts to cut emissions
at source, we are all still responsible for some carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases going into the
atmosphere, so causing global warming.
We can choose to ignore this, and take no action to tackle
the consequences of those unavoidable emissions which might
dwarf everything we’ve been able to cut.
Or we can take responsibility for them. One way of doing so
is to ensure that an equivalent amount of carbon is either
absorbed, or avoided being emitted, elsewhere.
This can be achieved by financing the introduction of renewable
energy or energy efficiency measures to replace the need for
fossil fuels, or by conserving or planting forests, to absorb carbon
from the atmosphere.
This, in essence, is carbon offsetting.
In practice, this is usually achieved through buying credits from
emissions reduction projects, preferably those which are
accredited to an internationally recognised standard.
These standards are becoming increasingly rigorous and robust,
particularly on the ‘voluntary market’, allowing companies to fund
such schemes with confidence.
Increasingly, these standards include provision for wider social
and environmental benefits, particularly among less well-off
communities in developing countries.
Such socially progressive offsets simultaneously reduce carbon
emissions and improve the quality of life of people who are
threatened by the impacts of climate change.
Front Cover Photo © Gareth Bentley
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As such, they can be a powerful tool for sustainable
development.
www.greenfutures.org.uk
greenhouse gases, whilst generating real value for the
communities and nations involved.
For those who are still doubtful about that kind of
value, I have only one question: when you’ve done
everything you can to reduce your own carbon footprint
through changing your lifestyle and being super efficient
at home, work and play, what are you going to do about
the rest? Ignore it – or deal with it by finding the best
possible offset product on the market?
That’s the challenge that confronted Forum for the
Future right from the start. So we dealt with it – in an
effort to be genuinely carbon neutral. And we’re proud of
the offset initiatives in which we’ve invested to make
that possible.
Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum
for the Future.
Photo © Walter B. McKenzie / Getty
For a surprisingly large number of environmentalists,
offsetting is a still a dirty word. Deep scepticism about
the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism,
combined with a few early stories about dodgy deals,
persuaded several ‘green gurus’ to adopt stridently
hostile positions. This sowed the seed for doubt in many
people’s minds, with the result that offsetting is still not
seen as it should be: that is, as making a critical and
hugely beneficial contribution to a low-carbon society.
Don’t get me wrong. We’re no more sympathetic to
ineffective, poor quality, ‘socially blind’ offsetting than any
of these critics. Every emerging market, without
exception, has its fair share of rubbish products.
But in this Special Edition, we invite you to share our
excitement at the other end of that market, represented
by a growing number of schemes and organisations
doing exactly what it says on the tin: cost-effectively
achieving measurable reductions in emissions of
Green Futures January 2011 3
A simple piece of human-powered technology has revolutionised
lives across northern India, reports Martin Wright, and
sparked fierce debate about the morality of offsetting.
Pump
In the middle of a field on the plains of northern India,
farmer Ram Dyal is making a point. One hand grabbing
my sleeve, he wraps his other round a sturdy bamboo
pole. “This”, he says, slapping it for emphasis, “has
lifted poverty from our valley. It has lifted poverty from
my home.”
He’s speaking through an interpreter, but looking me
hard in the eyes to make sure I understand.
‘This’ is a simple treadle pump, costing around $30,
which uses a couple of hours a day of human power –
Ram Dyal’s feet and those of his family – to raise water
from a tubewell to irrigate the fields.
It doesn’t sound that exciting – a bamboo frame and
treadles, a simple two cylinder pump, and a long plastic
tube thrust deep into the soil. But its effects are nothing
short of revolutionary. Because by enabling crops to be
grown all year round, rain or drought, it transforms the
livelihoods of the rural poor.
A rural revolution
Take Ram Dyal’s family. Since installing the pump,
they’ve diversified on a grand scale, growing garlic,
cauliflower, cabbages, tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs and
spices, for their own consumption and for sale. As a
result, everyone’s better fed, healthier – and much better
off, thanks to selling surplus crops. This means they no
longer have to decamp en masse in the dry season to
work for an unreliable pittance as labourers on the
notoriously hazardous building sites of one of India’s
burgeoning cities. Instead, the children can stay at school,
and the family no longer lives in fear of losing their land.
It’s a success story repeated, with variations, among
hundreds of thousands of families right across northern
India, where the relatively high water table lends itself to
such technology. The pumps were developed by
International Development Enterprises, India (IDEI) and
now form the heart of a thriving network of energy
entrepreneurs – manufacturers, retailers and installers which has generated sales of approaching two million
pumps in total. Studies by the World Bank and the
Acumen Fund confirm that families with treadle pumps
enjoy better nutrition, health, income and prospects than
they did before.
It is a triumph of simplicity and scale: a
straightforward, robust technology: living proof that
dramatic improvements in quality of life don’t have to
come from the use of fossil fuel. As such, it was a fitting
winner of an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy (it
was as an Awards Judge that I was lucky enough to
see the project and talk to dozens of its beneficiaries at
first hand).
Heart-warming stuff – but what has this got to do
with offsets? The answer lies in the alternative: the diesel
pumps, which, despite their shortcomings, had been
spreading rapidly across the country. By replacing diesel,
or removing the need for its adoption, the introduction of
treadle pumps is avoiding the emission of substantial
quantities of CO2 (around two-thirds of a tonne annually
per pump). And that makes it an ideal candidate for
offset funding.
Emissions credits bought on the voluntary market
through ClimateCare have enabled IDEI to roll out the
treadle pump programme much faster and further than
would have been possible otherwise. It’s not been the
only success story of this kind. Numerous other
small-scale renewable energy schemes, from solar
electricity to clean, energy-efficient cookstoves; from
biogas digesters to micro hydro, have been boosted
thanks to emissions credits sold by ClimateCare and
other offset providers.
Together, they exemplify just what can be achieved
through the best sort of voluntary offsets. Get them right,
and they don’t simply result in measurable carbon
reductions – important though these are. They also
produce measurable improvements in the quality of life
of ordinary people, particularly the rural poor in
developing countries – and the quality of the
environment on which they depend.
Who could possibly argue with that?
Photo © Sarah Butler - Sloss/Ashden Awards
action
Water of life: treadle
pumps bring prosperity
to Indian farms
Enter the backlash
Brendan O’Neill, for one. Writing in Spiked Online in
2007, the influential commentator lambasted the treadle
pump offsets as nothing short of “eco-enslavement”.
ClimateCare, he argued, was “encouraging people in the
developing world to ditch modern methods of farming
(such as diesel pumps)… so (its clients) can fly around
the globe with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that,
thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over
double, are working by hand … doing hard physical
labour … rather than using machines that emit carbon.”
“Feeling guilty about your two-week break in
“Hard work? It’s only walking up and down…!”
Bhikram Singh, a vigorous seventy-nine year old, is one
of life’s enthusiasts. “In the old days”, he told me, “I just
had one crop, the wheat. I used to use the diesel
pump, but it was expensive, and I couldn’t always hire
one when I needed it, and it washed all the topsoil over
to one side of the field. I really wanted to get out of that
mess...”
The great advantage of the treadle pump, he
explained, was the way it sent just the right amount of
water, at the right time, across the fields, at a steady
trickle which allowed the moisture to sink into the soil
rather than sluice it away. “Now I get three or four crops
a year ... we can eat so much better. I buy new clothes
for all the family. Next year I’m renting more land so I
can expand…”
Wasn’t the pumping hard work? “Nooo! It’s only
walking up and down! It’s like climbing a hill. If you want
hard work, try carrying the water all the way from the
well, like we used to.” (I tried the pump; once I’d got
used to the rythym, the effort felt like cycling gently
uphill at a slow but steady pace. Others have described
it as being like a step machine at the gym.) Then
Bhikram pointed at his knee. “See this? It used to be
swollen and painful. Now, the pain’s eased and the
swelling’s gone down…”
Across the field, a girl aged 12 or so leapt onto a
pair of treadles, laughing and showing off to me that
she could work it, too. Photos of children like this have
sparked allegations in the West that such ‘human
scale’ technology encourages child labour. To which
the only answer is: yes, children – mainly teenagers, but
some younger – do indeed work the pumps: on
average for around 30 minutes a day, according to an
Acumen study, either before or after school.
This is hardly child labour of the sweatshop variety;
more a case of helping out on the family farm, a
commonplace for children across India. Far better to
spend half an hour on the pump and the rest of the day
in school, than long months on a building site…
Barbados … living it up with cocktails on sunlit
beaches?”, added O’Neill with a flourish. “Well, offset that
guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the
developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal
away your eco-remorse…” And so on, at some length.
It was wonderfully polemical stuff – and wildly wide of
the mark, at least as far as the facts were concerned (see
box, ‘Hard work?...’). But O’Neill’s central claim –
that carbon offsets were no more than a rich Westerner’s
guilt-trip – struck a chord with many. It epitomised the
backlash which erupted against offsets in the mid-2000s,
and which still has considerable influence today.
In some respects, it was inevitable. Offsets had
become a bit of a green fashion badge among
celebrities, with everyone from Coldplay to Atomic Kitten
releasing ‘carbon neutral’ albums. Such a surge of pop
star glamour might have made life easier for the picture
editors (the lissom bodies of the Kittens being a welcome
alternative to yet another biogas digester), but it was a
red rag to the bullish scepticism of your average
journalist. Set against a lifestyle rich in planes and limos,
offsets could easily look like a token gesture – and in
some cases, they probably were.
O’Neill is no environmentalist – quite the contrary –
but his views found echoes in the green movement too.
From George Monbiot to Greenpeace, many argued that
offsets effectively ‘legitimise’ carbon emissions: after all,
why bother with the thorny task of reducing CO2 when
you can simply pay someone to do it for you?
Some described it as ‘buying complacency’ – a
guilt-free pass to carry on as normal. Monbiot and others
even likened offsets to the indulgences sold to medieval
sinners to earn time off purgatory. And one website
memorably satirised the whole process by offering
unfaithful partners the chance to become ‘Cheat
Neutral’. Want to betray your spouse? Simply pay £2.50
to someone who pledges to stay faithful…
Dubious motives aside, other more concrete
criticisms fuelled the backlash. Under close scrutiny,
some early offset schemes looked at best ineffective, and
at worst no more than a scam, providing little or no
assurance that the money invested was really going to
make a difference. A few high-profile failures drew
withering fire. Coldplay supported a mango plantation
Photo © Martin Wright
Making the connection:
by bringing solar power
to remote communities,
offset funding can speed
development
Photo © Vikram Raghuvanshi - iStock
project in India to help offset emissions from a world tour.
The trees were planted, but someone forgot to ensure
they were watered…
Forestry offsets in particular attracted flak. If you’re
relying on trees to sequester your carbon, you have to
ensure they’ll be there for decades to come – up to a
century, in fact. Which, at a time of growing pressure on
land resources, is a big ask.
Investing in renewables and energy efficiency, which
displace carbon emissions rather than soak them up,
sounds more certain. But, as with forestry, it leaves the
nagging ‘additionality’ question: would the development
have happened anyway without your support? Because if
it had, you couldn’t credibly claim that it was offsetting
‘your’ emissions. And at a time of massive investment in
such technologies, that is an extremely hard call to make.
Some of these shortcomings were perhaps inevitable
in a market that was less than two decades old, and
maturing fast. And the critics have done everyone a
service by prompting the offset industry to examine its
practices and draw up new, more robust standards.
Guilt-tinged or gilt-edged?
But it’s worth dwelling here a little on that core
question: are offsets merely an easy distraction from
taking real responsibility for our own emissions?
The honest response is: yes, possibly, on occasion.
There have no doubt been some, usually individuals rather
than companies, who have bought carbon offsets as a
token gesture, with little or no intention to modify their
lifestyles further. These are the caricatures savaged by
O’Neill and others.
However, even if that were the case, the criticism
would only be valid if the offsetter would otherwise have
taken more direct action to cut emissions. And there’s
precious little evidence that this is so.
Take a hypothetical Land Rover driver, who might, one
assumes, be quietly reassured that his miles have been
offset thanks to the company’s deal with ClimateCare.
Then he reads that it’s all a con. So does he think: “Hang
on, this offset stuff isn’t all it seems… I need to do more,
Development potential
Many see a promising marriage between offset
projects and more conventional development. “Africa
is littered with half finished projects, where, say, clean
water provision’s been put in and then the funding’s
dried up”, says ClimateCare’s Edward Hanrahan.
“Many of these projects also reduce carbon
emissions, which can provide a sustainable source of
finance.” He promotes a vision whereby charities
identify the most worthwhile aid projects and build
relationships at the sharp end, and offset providers
can focus on achieving verification and building
relationships with corporate buyers.
much more…?” And so the scales fall from his eyes, and
he gives up his car, gets on his bike, and stops flying to
his weekend pad in the Med? It seems, to say the least,
unlikely.
The decline in numbers of individuals buying offsets
over the last five years has hardly been matched by a
surge in personal commitment elsewhere. And it’s not
surprising. A large part of offsets’ early appeal was to
people who genuinely wanted to do the right thing, but
were never going to buy into making revolutionary
lifestyle changes – no matter how much they were
hectored by environmentalists.
For them, the relentless ‘carbon-sin’ rhetoric simply
had the effect of chipping away at their willingness to
help out. And it failed to acknowledge the very real limits
of ‘carbon austerity’ in industrial societies with a
carbon-intensive infrastructure. One in which, unless
you’re a monk on the one hand, or a wealthy green
gadget freak on the other, it’s hard to get through your
daily round without emitting significant amounts of
carbon.
Photo © George Clerk - iStock
So it’s not surprising if, rather than abandon
offsetting their car emissions and taking to the bicycle
instead, many appear to have used the backlash as a
trigger to do nothing at all. And for those who were
always inclined to feel cynical, the criticisms have given
them the perfect excuse for inertia. They have decided,
as it were, that it is better to curse the darkness than
light a single candle…
Corporate buyers have taken up some of the slack,
with volumes rising year on year apart from recession-hit
2009, but the negative press has made many wary of
being associated too closely with offsets, whether or not
they think they are effective. As Paul Monaghan, Head of
Ethics and Sustainable Development at the Co-operative
Bank, puts it: “All the negative publicity just gives
companies another excuse not to buy... The green
movement”, he concludes, “has shot itself in the foot here.”
A thorough investigation by the UK Parliament’s
Environmental Audit Committee, published in 2007,
concluded that the voluntary offset market could play an
important role in both cutting emissions and raising
awareness - and it urged both government and business
to get behind it. But by then, the cynicism was well
entrenched. Forum for the Future’s Jonathon Porritt
describes the reaction to voluntary offsets from fellow
green activists as “nervous, muddled and hostile,” with
commentators distracted by the “variable and uncertain”
aspects of the evolving market, along with simple
ignorance of what it can achieve. “Inevitably some
companies have dropped out,” because of the negative
publicity, he notes – and that means more greenhouse
gases are being emitted than they otherwise would be.
Emissions impossible
And there’s the rub. Everyone involved agrees that
offsets should never be the sole, or even the prime,
strategy for cutting carbon. That should always begin at
home. But unless you source all your energy from
renewables, transport all your products in electric trucks,
never step on a plane, train or bus, let alone consume
anything made in a Chinese factory, you’ll still have some
carbon emissions against your name. So what are you
going to do about them – unless you offset?
Intriguingly, such evidence as there is suggests that,
contrary to the activists’ rhetoric, individuals and
companies who make a positive choice to offset don’t,
as a rule, end up merrily burning more fossil fuels, smug
in the knowledge they’ve atoned for their sins. More
often, it seems to act as a prompt for more
engagement, rather than less. And in the worst case
scenario, as ClimateCare’s Adam Harvey points out,
even if the offset gesture is token and the motive is guilt,
the money spent is still out there, doing some good.
In time, of course, there might be a genuinely global
carbon market, where these transactions happen
seamlessly, driving down carbon emissions. Until then,
investing in socially progressive offsets can make a
direct, tangible difference to both your carbon footprint
and the quality of life of some of the world’s poorest
people, none of whom, it’s pretty to safe to assume,
give a damn whether that funding has precisely
balanced your emissions or not.
On which note, it’s worth reminding ourselves just
why we’re concerned about carbon emissions in the
first place. It’s not because we have some abstract
obsession with atmospheric chemistry. Rather, it’s
because we fear the human consequences of climate
change. These will be felt all the harder, and sooner, by
people like Ram Dyal and his family, people who are in
every sense on the front line of climate change.
So when we invest in a rigorous, pro-poor offset
scheme, we’re achieving two goals simultaneously. We
are both fulfilling our responsibility to reduce our
environmental impact – and improving the quality of life
of those threatened by it.
Get offsets right, then, and they’re about much
more than simply balancing emissions; they’re about
speeding sustainable development, right across the globe.
Martin Wright is Editor in Chief of Green
Futures, and a Visiting Judge for the Ashden
Awards for Sustainable Energy.
Raising
the
Anyone coming to offsetting for the first time could be forgiven
for thinking they’d fallen into an alphabet soup. So here’s a (very
simple) guide to the essentials.
The market for carbon as a traded commodity consists of
two main sectors:
• Regulated, or ‘compliance’, carbon markets, which
are governed by international rules defined in the Kyoto
Protocol, and which include Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) projects. (Some uncertainty hangs
over CDM’s future post-2012, with negotiations for a
successor to Kyoto still very much in the balance.) A
number of national schemes also fall into this category.
• Voluntary carbon markets, which are unregulated and
include a range of different trading relationships and
voluntary project standards. Many emphasise social
benefits as well as carbon ones.
These markets differ radically in the way they operate
and who they cater for. The compliance market is aimed
mainly at large energy-intensive industries that need to
purchase huge numbers of credits (usually at the
cheapest possible price). Although open to all, this market
is dominated by companies who have compulsory targets
under the Kyoto Protocol or other national or regional
‘cap-and-trade’ systems. As such, the credits they buy
tend to be generated by major industrial-scale projects –
such as cleaning up emissions from Chinese factories –
which have relatively few benefits for local communities,
and are hardly inspiring stories to tell.
The CDM projects share, in theory, the ambitions of
the Millennium Development Goals for alleviating poverty.
However, unless they are certified to the Gold Standard
(see below), this remains more theory than practice.
In contrast, the voluntary market, which is what any
company considering offsetting out of choice will be
dealing with, has a much wider range of customers, from
individuals to large companies, with very different needs
and aspirations, resulting in a much broader range of
projects. For these buyers, voluntarily purchasing
relatively lower volumes of credits, price is often not the
overriding concern. They are for the most part buying
because they see the ethical, strategic or reputational
benefit of doing so, and so the provenance of the credits,
and the story behind them, become more important
factors in their purchasing decisions.
The voluntary market can also act as a kind of
proving ground for technologies, which later go on to be
Photo © Simon Bond
standards
Photo © JetJock / iStock
Sunset sector:
the regulated market
focuses on heavy
industry
recognised in the compliance market. This happened with
efficient cookstoves, for example, and may well do so
with water filters (which qualify for offset funding because
they avoid the need to purify water by boiling it – usually
using wood as fuel).
Because the compliance market is regulated
internationally, you might assume it is more tightly
governed. In fact, there have been a number of
high-profile allegations of dubious behaviour or worse.
Recently, it was alleged that some Chinese chemical
companies were deliberately ramping up production of
HFC-23, a highly potent greenhouse gas, purely to make
money from its destruction via CDM finance.
That’s not to say the voluntary market has always
been a pillar of rectitude. In its early days at least, a lack
of rigorous standards undoubtedly saw some poor
projects slip through the net. But partly because of all the
criticism, voluntary standards have recently become a
great deal tighter, under the influence of the International
Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA). This
includes the vast majority of respectable offset providers,
and was itself set up to promote the highest standards of
industry practice.
The standards are not entirely uniform, however, and
that’s no bad thing. It can help encourage innovation,
and spur providers to design products for a range of
buyers. And because the voluntary market is just that –
voluntary – it is buyers who have the bargaining power:
this in itself is helping drive standards up, as after all the
criticism, no-one wants to be seen buying – or selling – a
sub-standard offset.
Raising the standard
There are now around 20 standards covering the
voluntary market, offering various degrees of rigour.
Some are specialist – aimed at forestry offsets, for
example. As Jonathon Porritt points out, though, while a
wide range of standards may encourage innovation, it
also ferments confusion among consumers. Now,
however, two have have emerged as widely respected,
notably the Gold Standard and the Voluntary Carbon
Standard (VCS).
Each standard is endorsed by ICROA, and includes
tough verification elements to avoid the classic ‘elephant
traps’ of non-additionality, leakage and impermanence
(see box). On top of this, it is now standard practise
among ICROA members to guarantee offsets, so if they
don’t materialise from one project, another must be
provided as a replacement.
Further assurance is provided by the rapid adoption
of a registration system. First established in 2007, this
allocates a unique serial number to each project and
each tonne of CO2 reduction achieved, and keeps a
record of all the purchases. Offsets are tracked for life,
traded securely and ‘retired’ permanently. So in theory
this means they cannot be double counted, and project
developers and offset providers alike cannot cheat the
system. In a surprisingly short time, the registries have
made the voluntary carbon market as transparent, if not
more so, than the regulated market.
All this rigour makes it doubly frustrating that, for
now, the UK Government has failed to include any of the
voluntary market standards in its best practice scheme,
which only recognises offsets validated by the CDM – a
decision described by Forum’s Iain Watt as “utterly
pointless… The Government was meant to be setting
acceptable standards for the voluntary market, now
participants are just not bothering (with UK verification).”
ICROA decries “the marginalisation of voluntary
projects”. Hanrahan agrees, arguing that if the
Government is serious about encouraging offsetting as a
key strategy, then it really should recognise the Gold
Standard and the VCS.
Such has been the outcry from inside and outside
the industry, that many expect the Government to
change its mind on this before long.
Where does the money go?
The main types of projects funded through the voluntary
market are as follows:
• Renewable energy (eg solar, wind, hydro and
biomass)
• Energy efficiency (eg improved cookstoves, CFL or
LED lights)
• ‘Fuel switching’ (eg crop waste substituting for
wood in stoves; biogas schemes – animal and human
waste used to produce cooking gas via anaerobic
digestion; and coal to gas)
• Forestry (includes conservation, improved
management, agroforestry and tree planting)
• Emerging technologies (such as water filters, which
reduce emissions principally by avoiding the need to boil
water on a wood-fired stove).
The average price per tonne of CO2 equivalent
saved in 2009 was £4.16. But prices vary widely,
depending on the provider, the technology, and the
extent of social and other benefits included. As a rule,
solar and some forest projects come out as more
expensive than simpler energy efficiency ones. Offset
providers often package high cost offsets together with
lower cost projects. This helps support projects with a
high social impact that may cost a little more.
In 2009, the voluntary market accounted for 94
million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, with a combined value
of US$387 million.
Photo © Martin Wright
Nishant Bioenergy’s
cookstove – using crop
waste instead of LPG
Photo © Nikada / iStock
Green horizons: forest
offsets are controversial,
but could be crucial to
conservation.
Seeing the wood for the trees: offsets and forests
Forestry was the earliest target for offset funding, and no
wonder. Everyone loves the idea of planting trees for the
future. One of the first specialist offset companies (along
with ClimateCare) was originally called Future Forests –
now the Carbon Neutral Company.
Some early forest offsets drew sharp criticism,
however, and were found wanting on the three key
‘tests’ of additionality, permanence and leakage. Wary of
being associated with something so controversial, many
organisations stopped buying forest offsets altogether.
But recently they’ve returned to favour, not least
because of renewed focus on the speed and scale with
which the world’s tropical forests are being destroyed.
This has in part been encouraged by the
conclusions of the Stern Review, which warned that
rainforest loss alone would, in just four years, release
more carbon into the atmosphere than every flight from
the dawn of aviation until 2025. Forest conservation is
also now part of the global climate negotiations, with
attention focused on the potential to reduce emissions
caused by deforestation or degradation (REDD, as it’s
known). While there is no guarantee that this will
deliver, it could end up providing a massive shot in the
arm for rainforest protection (see ‘Forest futures’,
GF74, p26). Already, some forest governments are
eyeing up the success of Belize in attracting funding
from Norway (which is channelling its substantial oil
earnings into forest protection). Peru, for example,
wants to incorporate REDD into a broad conservation
strategy that will cover 54 million of its estimated 64
million hectares of rainforest, with a final goal of
eliminating all emissions from deforestation and
degradation.
A number of forest projects have now won
accreditation under both regulated and voluntary
standards, such as Plan Vivo, specifically designed for
forestry by the Edinburgh Carbon Management Centre.
While any forest offset will require fierce scrutiny to
make sure it meets acceptable standards, it’s fair to say
that it’s no longer the neglected member of the family.
Elephant traps (and how to avoid them)
Three key tests for any credible offset scheme
Additionality
If a project funded by offset money would have
happened anyway, without that finance, then it can’t
credibly claim to offset carbon. So, for example, if
China were to insist that all new power generation
projects in a particular district must be renewable, then
any renewable energy offset projects yet to be
undertaken there would fail the additionality test.
Safeguard Thorough checks carried out as part of a
verification process, ensure that there were no funds
already in place to enable such a project, or that it
wasn’t simply required by law. Additionality remains a
complex issue. “It is part of the risk of our business,”
explains Edward Hanrahan. “It’s one reason why we
specialise in real development projects in the least
developed countries, especially in Africa,” as in such
regions, it is far less likely that the projects would have
gone ahead without carbon financing.
Leakage
If implementation of a project causes higher emissions
elsewhere, these are referred to as leakage. It’s a
particular danger when conserving an area of forest
which may already be under pressure, since that
could simply result in the forest destruction happening
nearby – for example, by people gathering firewood. It
can also be a risk where investment in renewables
might lead to polluting power (for example, diesel
generators) simply being shifted elsewhere.
Safeguard Ensure that there is adequate protection
for any neighbouring forest; or if the project involves
tree planting, make sure that this doesn’t displace
agricultural land. Establish careful baselines for all
relevant activity in the region of the project concerned.
Permanence
Usually referring to forest projects. If you buy credits
now which assume the trees are still going to be there,
soaking up carbon, in 30 years time, you’re risking all
the accumulated CO2 being released should the forest
be inadvertently destroyed or felled.
Safeguard As well as trying to make sure there is
long term land tenure, to minimise the threat of nasty
surprises, responsible providers sometimes use a
virtual ‘buffer zone’: holding back a proportion of
credits in case of unforeseen circumstances such
as these.
Photo © sharply done / iStock
…But would they have
been there anyway?
Offsets in
Glowing prospects
Rajendra Chitragi is a fruit merchant in the
coastal town of Kumta, in the southern
Indian state of Karnataka. With no
connection to the grid, he used to rely on
kerosene lanterns to keep his shop open
through the evening. But the dim light,
smoke and risk of fire weren’t much of a
draw for customers, and he got fed up with
the ongoing fuel and maintenance costs.
Then he heard about Orb Solar, a
Bangalore-based company that aims to make
solar energy affordable and accessible, by
combining installation and post-sale support
with help securing low-interest loans.
Compared with kerosene, photovoltaics offer a
cleaner, safer and more reliable source of light.
And the electricity generated can be used
to power other appliances, too, with long-term
cost savings. Orb Solar calculates that – by
exchanging a 2.5kwh diesel generator for a PV
array with a capacity of 1KW – a company can
save 470,000 rupees (US$10,000) over ten
years.
Today, the panels on Chitragi’s shop roof
power a number of low-energy 11W lamps
and an 18W electric fan. And he claims the
move has already boosted his business. “Solar
lights attract people at night time,” he says,
“especially during power cuts.”
It’s just one example of how a reliable
source of light and heat can mark the
beginning of greater transformation across a
community. It can give local entrepreneurs the
chance to expand their businesses, resulting in
an influx of new jobs and skills. Or it can help
to improve public services. Take the Gandhi
Hospital in Udupi. It recently invested in two
solar thermal systems, providing a 24-hour
supply of hot water for the first time. “Now we
can offer our patients a better service at a
lower cost”, says Dr Harishchandra, the
Managing Director.
As India’s largely coal-powered grid
struggles to meet demand for electricity,
there’s growing enthusiasm for alternative
sources. The success of Orb Solar is
testimony to this, with forty branches in
Karnataka alone, and further franchises across
India.
Photo © Adeel Halim
From Cambodian kitchens to Argentinian sugar
mills, offset projects are cutting emissions and
spurring development.
action
Lavishing carbon finance on simple improved
cook stoves may seem something of an
extravagance – especially if they only save 0.4
tonnes a year each. But with over one million
sold in Cambodia alone in the last five years,
that’s getting on for half a million tonnes.
Which is scale, by any reckoning.
The vast majority of Cambodians
depend on charcoal for cooking – not great
news in a nation so badly hit by forest loss. But
GERES, a French NGO with extensive
experience in the region, has worked with local
designers to come up with a new model of
stove which uses far less fuel – and emits far
less smoke… The result? Less pressure on the
country’s forests, and less respiratory disease
for its households. Retailing at just $5 or so,
the locally made stove has proved highly
popular with residents in Phnom Penh, the
capital.
In a project validated by the
Voluntary Carbon Standard, ClimateCare has
sold over 400,000 tonnes worth of emissions
reductions made possible by the new stove.
Most families in towns and cities
across Ghana, too, cook their meals on
charcoal, using a metal grate or shallow
‘coal-pot’. Much of the heat escapes, which
means more fuel is needed. This has serious
consequences in a country with one of the
highest rates of deforestation in Africa.
The Ghana Stoves project is
introducing the Gyapa, an insulated and
efficient cook stove, to families in Ghana. It
cooks food more quickly, requires less fuel,
and gives off less smoke – saving time, money
and health. And, thanks to carbon finance, it
can be sold at an affordable price.
The new boiler is expected to avoid
22,267 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. It’s a
flagship project that, with further support from
carbon finance schemes, could be replicated
in mills across the region.
And carbon savings aren’t the only positive
outcome. Local farmers profit from the sale of
waste biomass, even as the mill makes
savings by generating electricity on-site – as
opposed to forking out more for oil as the price
soars. And Nahar Mill is putting the savings
towards a more resilient local community, by
funding new medical services, materials for
schools and flood defences.
King charcoal
Photo © Adeel Halim
Spinning tales
The Nahar Spinning Mill started out in 1980 in
Ludhiana – the industrial hub of Punjab which
some affectionately dub the “Manchester of
India”. Back then it was a small affair, with just
800 spindles producing worsted yarn and
hosiery. Today, the 335,000 spindles of the
Nahar Group supply t-shirts and other
garments to major international high street
brands, such as GAP and Quicksilver.
Spinning isn’t the only industry in Punjab.
The mills sit among the northern plains where
basmati rice, famed across the world for its
fine aroma, is cultivated. Now, with
international markets creating opportunities for
economic growth, the demand for a clean and
reliable source of energy is linking the two
ancient industries.
The abundance of husk waste produced by
the rice milling process is being used by the
spinning mill to meet its energy requirements.
Previously, the Nahar Mill’s operations relied
heavily on a sporadic and unreliable supply of
energy from the grid (mostly from coal power)
and on fuel oil. But a new 5MW rice husk-fired
boiler produces steam to generate electricity,
meeting all the mill’s demand. Unlike fossil fuel
combustion, the carbon released in this process
doesn’t add to the total atmospheric content,
as an equivalent amount will be taken up again.
The sweetness of sugarcane is in the juice.
Less sweet is bagasse – the fibrous residue left
behind when the stalks are crushed. But it
contains a significant amount of energy, which
can be harnessed to drive the sugar
manufacturing process.
Sugar mills have been using waste
biomass in this way for hundreds of years. Take
La Providencia, a mill in the province of
Tucumán, Argentina, where 60% of the
country’s sugar is produced. It was built in
1882, when new trading opportunities brought
by the railway sparked a golden age for the
industry, and is today the country’s third most
important mill, producing 13,000 tonnes a year.
Its manufacturing process has always
relied on a mixture of bagasse, natural gas and
fuel oil to generate steam. But an inefficient
biomass boiler meant that not all the bagasse
was used, and that meant a higher proportion
of fossil fuels in the mix.
In 2005, a new high pressure biomass
boiler was installed at the mill, funded through
a ClimateCare carbon finance scheme. It has
significantly increased the amount of waste
bagasse that can be used in the sugar
production process, reducing dependence on
fossil fuels and avoiding an estimated 50,000
tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
It’s part of a wider initiative by parent
company Arcor Group to increase the
efficiency and reduce the environmental impact
of sugar production. It’s replacing traditional
burning methods with mechanisation, which
eliminates the need to wash the cane before
processing – cutting down on both
atmospheric pollution and water use.
By-products of the production process are
also being put to good use, with cane mud
cachaza collected to replenish depleted soil
and repair eroded land, molasses sold to yeast
manufacturers, and excess bagasse sent on to
paper mills.
Private investment in such measures is
limited, with much of the funding for
infrastructure tied to petrochemical companies.
But with further funding from carbon finance
schemes, projects such as this could be
replicated in all 19 sugar mills across Argentina
and elsewhere.
Photo © Justin Locke/National Geographic Society/Corbi
Carbon and cane
White heat
Photo © Vladimirovic / iStock
In the Russian town of Onega by the White
Sea, an old coal-fired power station has been
replaced with an efficient wood-fired biomass
plant that will provide warm water and heating
for 12,000 residents. With temperatures
regularly falling below -35oC in winter, finding a
reliable way to warm up is no optional extra.
The coal-fired boiler had been attached to
a hydrolysis plant, but this went bust a few
years ago, leaving the administration to search
for alternatives. What they found was a clean,
renewable and reliable source of fuel, available
in the form of waste biomass from the Onega
sawmill. It cost €7.5 million to build a new plant
– but the carbon emissions avoided by
replacing coal with waste biomass have
already generated €5 million through offset
schemes.
And there are wider benefits for the
community. Employees at the plant no longer
have to put up with the dust, noise and fumes
of the coal combustion process, and local
farmers are using the ash (a by-product) as
fertiliser.
Fixing a drink
Photo © Ecosecurities
Photo © Cafédirect Plc
Want to offset your cuppa? Even with the best
of intentions, tracing the footprint of every bean
and tea leaf is no piece of cake. But last year
Cafédirect made a start, calculating the carbon
emissions of its entire supply chain – including
over 40 producers, in 14 different countries.
Now, as part of a three-year strategy to shrink
the print, it’s offsetting 5,000 tonnes of CO2 over
six years, through the CEPICAFE reforestation
project, which is undergoing validation by the
Carbon Fix forestry offset standard.
It’s a collaboration involving nine caserios
(villages) in the Sierra Piura, northern Peru, and
a number of local and international NGOs.
Together, they are developing a long-term
forest management programme to enable the
sustainable extraction of precious resources,
including timber, firewood and shade-grown
coffee. Reforestation will address some chronic
problems in the area, such as soil depletion
and erosion. In addition, 10% of the income
from the carbon credit sales will fund climate
change adaptation strategies with coffee
farmers.
Warm winds
The district of Bahce nestles in the Nur
mountain range on southern Turkey’s
Mediterranean coast. Agriculture is a big part
of the economy, employing around half the
workforce, but a combination of widespread
soil erosion on the hillsides and poor
infrastructure keeps the region’s productivity in
check. Neighbouring trade centres Adana and
Osmaniye attract much of the local industry,
leaving Bahce struggling with low employment
and literacy rates.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that proposals
to build Turkey’s largest wind farm in the area
met with enthusiasm from the residents. The
project offered local people immediate jobs in
the construction phase, as well as long-term
opportunities in operation and maintenance,
and the chance to skill up in a new sector. It
also promised new roads and a local, reliable
source of electricity, in a region where the
neglect of basic infrastructure had long
hindered growth.
The contrast to the knee-jerk opposition
which any wind farm proposal triggers in
Britain could not be greater. Early in the
planning process, a community engagement
project found that the heads of the two villages
nearest to the proposed site had never heard
of renewable energy – although one had seen
wind turbines on TV. Now they share
Gokcedag Mountain with the 54 turbines of
the Zorlu Wind Farm. The farm is connected to
the national grid via a 9km transmission line,
and contributes around 512GWh of electricity
a year. It’s expected to save an average of
288,262 tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually, by
reducing the pressure on coal-fired plants.
Before Zorlu, large-scale hydro was the
only significant source of renewable energy in
Turkey. But rapid growth in demand for power
is drawing new investment in clean technology,
and – with high wind speeds year-in, year-out
– this may not be the largest farm for long.
Offsets:
the business
experience
Without offsets,“business is missing out on an opportunity to
contribute to a significant reduction in global emissions” says
Sally Uren, Deputy Director of Forum for the Future. We profile
the experience of three leading companies, all of whom offset
via ClimateCare, and look at some of the key issues affecting
offsetting decisions in the future.
Last resort –
or most bangs per buck?
Everyone agrees that offsets are only one tool available in
the carbon cutting kit.
The question is: at what point is that tool wielded?
Most argue that it should only be brought into action
when other options have been exhausted.
For Iain Watt, climate expert at Forum for the Future,
the guiding mantra is “Avoid – Reduce – Replace. Avoid
creating emissions in the first place, reduce them through
energy efficiency, and replace high-carbon sources of
energy with low- or zero-carbon ones. Offsetting may play
an important part but it should not be the priority of your
carbon management strategy.”
Others stress that, once you’ve plucked the
‘low-hanging fruit’ in terms of emissions reductions at
home, it can be perverse to spend large amounts on
ratcheting them down just a little further, when the same
money could achieve vastly greater reductions elsewhere
in the world – and deliver all sorts of social benefits too.
Edward Hanrahan cites one client (he won’t name
names) who was so fixated on the ‘reduce first, then
offset’ hierarchy, that they spent a cool £80,000 on
highly sophisticated lighting controls to cut a final 100
tonnes of CO2: an achievement that would have cost just
£75 via offsets. “If they’d spent their original budget on
offsets, they would be a substantial net contributor to
emissions reduction”.
Some companies, he suggests, have taken irrational
decisions in an effort to appease ‘offset sceptics’, when
they might have achieved more, both for the climate and
their bottom line, by taking a more cool-headed approach
to calculating the maximum potential carbon which could
be saved per dollar invested – or, in other words, how to
achieve the biggest bang for their available bucks.
At the Co-op, Paul Monaghan is keen to stress that
offsets are only part of the picture. “We are also doing a
host of other things. Virtually all of our three thousand
properties support a green electricity tariff. As part of this
we've entered into long-term purchase agreements that
guarantee new power generation is created, and have
begun to erect wind farms on our farmland. We've also
pioneered the use of micro-generation, and house the
UK's largest applications of solar PV and micro wind.”
But he adds: “To say you should only offset once all other
options have been exhausted is daft: it’s like saying waste
recycling activities should be discouraged as they incite
people to duck the higher imperative of waste
minimisation.”
Zelda Bentham of Aviva agrees. “Our view is that
genuine reductions in carbon emissions to the
atmosphere are beneficial – whether they come from a
company’s own operations, a compliance trading scheme
or from voluntary (offset) projects that help economic
progress in a more sustainable way.”
Photo © Cameron Davidson/Corbis
Aviva
Last year, UK-based insurance company Aviva
calculated its global CO2 emissions at 104,351 tonnes
– and paid to offset it in its entirety. It added an extra
5% to drive carbon reduction above and beyond its
own footprint. The bill came in at £620,000.
Over 100,000 tonnes may seem a lot – but it’s
down 20,000 against the 2006 baseline, thanks to a
range of initiatives to reduce its impact. They include
behaviour change (cutting out unnecessary travel
through the use of teleconferencing, for example),
introducing more efficient ICT systems, and buying
electricity from renewable energy companies.
Aviva only buys offsets certified through the rigorous
Gold Standard or Voluntary Carbon Standard schemes
(see p10). Since 2006, approximately half of its spend
has gone towards wind energy projects, avoiding over
220,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, with a further
100,000 tonnes offset through biomass and
hydropower schemes.
The company favours projects in those countries
where it has a market presence – which include the
giants of East Asia (China, India, South Korea), and
some ‘developing’ nations (from Romania to Sri Lanka),
Google, which has made a big splash with recent
announcements on investing in renewables (see GF77,
p6), also sees offsets as part of its carbon reduction
portfolio — despite the fact that it took until May of this
year for the company to finish buying the credits for the
energy it used back in 2007. Head of Green Energy, Bill
Weihl, says this is because tracing carbon offsets back
to particular projects and verifying that they actually
reduce emissions — and by how much — is a tricky
business.
At Forum for the Future, Deputy Director Sally Uren
believes that “it’s important to look at carbon reduction
per dollar invested. You can invest millions in a new
manufacturing process and take 5% off your overall
footprint – or you can invest the same sum in projects
and deliver millions of tonnes of carbon savings.” But she
sounds a cautionary note. “The priority is to reduce your
as well as some major European countries (France,
Italy, Spain).
Supporting the development of clean energy is a
good way to improve the prospects of communities
vulnerable to climate change. But it’s not the only way,
Aviva believes. Funds raised through offset schemes
also support projects aimed specifically at the rural
poor: hence Aviva’s purchase of credits generated by
IDEI’s treadle pump scheme (see p4).
It has also purchased a total of 22,000 tonnes
from CO2Balance, a Kenyan carbon management
company that distributes super-efficient cookstoves
which require 50% less wood than a traditional open
fire. Kenya is not a country in which Aviva operates,
but one it considers to “suffer more from the effects of
climate change, both in terms of speed and impact”
than most. The project not only reduces the number of
trees felled for fuel, but has created over 200 new jobs
in production. It also supports local industry by
sourcing all materials used to build the stoves (bricks,
cement and cast iron) in Kenya.
Such local, human-scale projects, says Zelda
Bentham, Senior Environment Manager at Aviva, “have
a resonance with our employees”.
baseline impacts as quickly and effectively as you can.”
It’s one echoed by Jonathon Porritt. “Offsets have to
be a major factor,” he acknowledges, but they shouldn’t
be purchased purely because they deliver the biggest
reductions per pound or dollar. The basic ‘reduce first’
hierarchy is sound, he says, because “offsets alone will
never get us to where we want to be. They must be
seen as part of an integrated energy management
strategy; and the main driver of that (where most
companies are concerned) is energy cost and security
of supply.” If you neglect opportunities to cut emissions,
then any amount of offset spending risks being
dismissed as “a gesture”, he warns.
History, Geography
It’s all very well to cut emissions now – but what
about those you’ve created in the past? They’re still out
there in the atmosphere, warming the world. Offsets are
arguably the only option in the carbon management
toolkit that can make amends. Imagine you’ve finally
achieved a completely zero-carbon lifestyle – but that
your cumulative carbon emissions in the past total, say,
250 tonnes. You can only credibly claim to be carbon
neutral if you take action now to offset that total.
“Because emissions are cumulative and historic”,
argues ClimateCare’s Edward Hanrahan, “it’s not enough
to say ‘Reduce: then Offset’. It should first be ‘Offset’ (to
tackle your past emissions); then ‘Reduce’ (your present
ones as much as possible), then ‘Offset’ (the remainder).”
Your emission is my emission
Complacency is a dangerous thing. A year or so ago,
British politicians were quietly congratulating themselves
on achieving impressive cuts in carbon emissions. Until,
that is, studies began to emerge showing that a
significant chunk of carbon pumped out of factories in
China and elsewhere was the result of meeting demand
for consumer goods in the UK. It became all too clear
that if emissions incurred in the production of imports are
included in the national total, the picture is very different.
It’s hardly surprising. Much of what we consume is now
produced abroad, and this applies particularly to
carbon-intensive manufactured goods. So countries like
China effectively emit on our behalf. This realisation has
implications not just for Government, but for any
company with an international supply chain. Globalisation
is making a nonsense of national targets.
Businesses such as Marks & Spencer are starting to
realise this, says Iain Watt. “Being neutral in the stores
and offices is one thing, (but) now they’re looking at how
much carbon it takes to get a product on the shelves”,
which includes assessing emissions from production and
Photo © Tom Morton
Growing opportunities:
a reforestation project
in Uganda
The Co-operative Group
The Co-op takes “a scientific approach, rather than a
philosophical one”, says Paul Monaghan. Instead of
buying offsets for image reasons, he says, it does so to
bring it closer to achieving its goal of carbon neutrality.
Since 2000, the Co-op has offset over 400,000
tonnes of CO2. It raises funds for the scheme by
pinpointing a few carbon-intensive things that its
customers commonly do, such as driving a car, buying
a home, or taking a flight.
As part of its mortgage scheme, the Co-operative
Bank anticipates the carbon emissions of a household
for the lifetime of the mortgage, and offsets one fifth of
that total. The car insurance scheme works in a similar
way, offsetting 20% of exhaust carbon.
The Co-operative Travel offers customers the
opportunity to offset the carbon emitted through
aviation fuel. This is part of a wider initiative to reduce
the footprint of the Group’s travel outlets by using
electricity from renewable sources, as well as offsetting
core management and funding research into
sustainable tourism.
Then, in 2007, the Co-operative Insurance
Services announced that it would “go beyond carbon
neutral”, offsetting 110% of all operational emissions,
plus the impact of any unavoidable business travel.
The Co-op buys its offset credits through
ClimateCare and, like Aviva, supports the treadle
pump scheme. It funded the installation of over 61,000
treadle pumps in 2008, expected to result in 27,500
tonnes of avoided CO2 emissions over a five-year
period. And it also backs the Cambodian cookstoves
initiative (see p18).
It only buys voluntary offsets from developing
countries, says Monaghan, because the relative social
benefits are normally much greater – and there is more
certainty that the projects would not have gone ahead
anyway (in other words, not fall at the ‘additionality’
hurdle).
Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar Land Rover offsets 100% of the CO2 emissions
produced through its manufacturing assembly
processes, and via a scheme launched in 2007, offers
Land Rover customers the opportunity to offset the
emissions of their first 45,000 miles – an option
integrated at point of sale. Jaguar customers can also
choose to offset emissions via the Jaguar website.
“We’re in a position to invest in projects that would
not otherwise get off the ground”, says Fran Leedham,
Head of Environment and Sustainability, recognising the
sheer weight of investment potential yielded by the
group. “But it’s not a standalone thing”, she asserts.
“It’s part of an integrated approach to carbon
reduction.”
Jaguar Land Rover is investing £800 million in
research and development to improve the efficiency of
its cars and manufacturing processes. But, with an
average lead time of five years from the design of a car
to its production, carbon offsetting enables the group
transportation. And then there are those incurred when
the consumer puts it in her car and drives home. Such
‘secondary’ emissions are thought to be about ten times
those incurred ‘in house’: so all the effort made to
improve office and store efficiency and buy green energy
is dwarfed by comparison.
Some companies are taking this approach a step
further, says Watt, extending it to all operations upon
which the company depends, internal and external: “It’s a
broader, more holistic view of the issue, that takes into
account the company’s exposure to potential cost risk
associated with carbon emissions”, he says.
For Paul Monaghan, this all strengthens the case for
offsetting. “The thing about the climate is that it doesn't
give a jot where the carbon originates. Whether it's
avoided in the UK, or offset in India, a tonne of reduction
is a tonne of reduction is a tonne of reduction.”
unlimited potential to achieve more. Their present
contribution to curbing the vast amount of carbon
emitted is just a drop in the ocean. In 2007-8, voluntary
offsetting prevented around 25 million tonnes of carbon
dioxide from entering the atmosphere. During the same
period, the US alone released around 6 billion tonnes…
Offset totals may be small now, but many observers
believe we have barely scratched the surface. As carbon
costs rise, driven by the UK government’s long term
emission reduction goals, says Jonathon Porritt, more
and more companies will be keen to adopt policies that
move them towards carbon neutrality. “At the moment
the market does not reflect the real price for carbon”, he
says. “The carbon price is so low it is not important to
most companies”, but as the true costs are reflected and
carbon prices rise, carbon offset volumes will inevitably,
continue to grow.
“We simply are not going to hit our targets (without
securing cuts elsewhere)”, he argues. And that means
“offsets must be a major factor” in tackling emissions.
Photo © Kylie Bisman
Future positive?
Whatever offsets’ achievements to date, there’s almost
to make an immediate difference. Jaguar Land Rover
expects to offset around 3 million tonnes
of carbon dioxide by 2012.
“The scale of the offset scheme is very significant”,
says Chief Executive at Forum for the Future. “It’s not a
permanent part of their carbon strategy”, she clarifies.
“It’s a way for them to do their bit while the technology
catches up.”
Jaguar Land Rover’s offset scheme supports
emissions reductions projects in 14 different countries
spanning Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and South
America.
The portfolio includes the development of
renewable energy sources, such as a wind farm in
China and a series of small scale hydro plants in
Tajikistan. These two initiatives combined are expected
to avoid 150,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year.
The offset scheme also supports energy efficiency
initiatives, such as low carbon lighting and cookstoves,
as well as the promotion of new technologies that offer
to reduce emissions in communities and industry alike.
Photo © Oneclearvision/iStock
Offset Positive is a Green Futures Special Edition,
produced in association with ClimateCare.
ClimateCare: www.jpmorganclimatecare.com
Editor: Martin Wright
Contributors: Jeremy Bowden, Anna Simpson,
Thalia Vounaki, Martin Wright
Green Futures is the leading international
magazine on environmental solutions and
sustainable futures. Founded by Jonathon
Porritt, it is published by Forum for the
Future, which works with leaders from
business and the public sector to create a
green, fair and prosperous world.
www.forumforthefuture.org
Production: Katie Shaw
Design: Declan Buckley
Printed on Sylvan Silk paper, made from 100%
de-inked waste and FSC certified sources, by Beacon
press, using their pureprint®
environmental print technology and vegetable
based inks.
Published November 2010 © Green Futures
Registered charity no. 1040519
Company no. 2959712
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Buying change: the case for carbon offsets

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