About

co2balance was founded in 2003 to provide a completely ethical and transparent means of carbon offset for businesses and individuals. We calculate your Carbon Footprint, advise you how to reduce it to the minimum and then offset the residue. This goes further than some environmental groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace that seem to advocate minimisation and leaving it there. We don’t believe that it’s right to stop there and ignore the unavoidable residual emissions. Steps should be taken to tackle them too.

Carbon Offsetting works by investing funds to absorb or prevent the emission of a tonnage of CO₂ equivalent to the client’s unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions. This is done by investing in projects that save energy emissions (efficiency-based offsets) or that absorb atmospheric CO₂ (forestry-based offsets).

We will be the first to accept that Carbon Offsetting is not the answer to global climate change BUT we strongly believe that it has an important part to play while new technologies are introduced and become widespread and while new behaviours and altered (low carbon) lifestyles become commonplace. Some environmental organisations believe that we should all stop flying, use only public transport and buy only seasonal, local food. These are legitimate enough aims (although not without ancillary impacts like the loss of tourist pounds to some of the world’s poorest places) but people will not make these changes overnight; we need to lead people along a path towards low carbon lifestyles (sooner rather than later, admittedly). We see Carbon Offsetting as a high profile way to raise awareness and to help people start that journey.

We follow Six Golden Rules that set us apart from every other carbon offset provider that we are aware of: -

Rule 1 We do not buy carbon offsets from other organisations. Some offset organisations act merely as brokers, with the majority of their carbon offsets generated by third parties over which they have little or no control. There has been adverse publicity about such schemes recently with one organisation admitting that they have no idea if they are being defrauded by their suppliers. This can never happen with co2balance as we have no ‘suppliers’. All offsets offered to our clients are in projects initiated and controlled by co2balance.

Rule 2 Offset projects based on energy efficiency must occur in countries or communities where the vast majority of energy currently generated comes from fossil fuels. That way we achieve the maximum carbon saving per £ invested. What is the point in investing in a wind farm in New Zealand when 70% of that country’s energy is generated from renewable sources?

Rule 3 Forestry offsets must occur on land in the ownership of the offset organisation. It is no use planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide on someone else’s land. All the legal agreements in the world won’t protect the trees against development if it’s in the interests of the landowner. co2balance only plants offset trees on land in their ownership to ensure that their long-term future is secure and that the woodland will be managed in perpetuity.

Rule 4 Offset trees must be harvested before they die. If trees that have been planted to absorb carbon dioxide are allowed to die and rot, the greenhouse gases will be released back into the atmosphere. co2balance intends to harvest trees before they die and utilise the timber in long-term uses such as construction projects ensuring that the carbon remains locked up in the timber well beyond the life of the tree.

Rule 5 Minimisation of energy use and reduction of your Carbon Footprint should come before offsetting.

Rule 6 All offset projects must be additional. That means that the funding for the project must come only from carbon offsetting clients. It is useless to invest in a project that would have happened anyway as you have not made a difference. For this reason, we will never, as some offset operators do, sell ‘carbon rights’ to our clients that come from existing projects. What is the use in buying the carbon rights in existing woodland or existing windfarms? The chances of them being removed in the event that their operators are not able to sell carbon rights are very slim. Before investing with another offset organisation, ask how they guarantee that their funding will only go into new projects. co2balance only invests clients’ funds in new projects. We will never sell offsets from existing projects to a client. It is for this reason that we do not offer renewable energy (RE) based offsets. The cost of saving carbon by investing offset funds in RE is too high compared with energy efficiency and forestry. A realistic estimate is between £50-100 per tonne of carbon saved. This suggests that those organisations offering RE-based offsets at costs significantly below this are merely offering ‘carbon rights’ in such projects rather than actually funding their development. We keep this position under review and will offer RE-based offsets when it becomes a viable and sensible option (i.e. as technology improves and costs fall). Another often overlooked problem associated with RE-based offsets is that if the carbon saving is sold to an offset customer then the energy generated by that project cannot be sold as ‘green’ or carbon-free as the carbon saved has been accounted for by an offset customer and cannot also be accounted for by the energy customer. If you choose to buy an RE-based offset, make sure that the electricity generated is not being sold to customers as green or carbon free – it is not.

We apologise if some of this is complicated but we feel it is vital that prospective clients fully understand the pitfalls that some offset schemes have fallen into and the steps that we take to avoid them.

If you have further questions, please complete our contact form.