Should I buy carbon offsets?

A quick guide for those in doubt

Climate Week has just finished and anyone who has not been living in a cave should’ve gotten the memo that our planet is on fire. The next thing that happens once you get the message is usually either one of these two reactions: denial or a feeling of helplessness. If you have the former you should just go here for the gist or straight to the IPCC report for the details. For those who have already understood the seriousness of the issue I will detail my journey into considering carbon offsets as a way of turning the feeling of helplessness into action.

If you care about our planet, probably the most infuriating feeling is that living a meaningful life without producing tons of carbon dioxide is practically impossible. Our societies have simply not evolved with the slightest consideration for the environment and carbon emissions top the list of the problems. At the core of the issue is the way we generate electricity: it is heavily reliant on fossil fuels and basically anything that we do uses electricity. On top of that we burn fossil fuels for transportation, cut down forests for agriculture and release many other aerosols making the situation worse. Travelling for work? You are killing the planet with greenhouse gases. Enjoying a meat sandwich? More CO2. Turning on the lights? Carbon emissions!

As long as we don’t distinguish ourselves from the animal kingdom by actually becoming an intelligent species that can coordinate globally, we have to get by with local and individual action. And we have to act now. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that temperatures are rising as fast as 0.2C/5yrs, thus we could quickly surpass the catastrophic 2C+ over pre-industrial levels. So it is incumbent upon us to act, and carbon offsets are one of the options you can look at.

Calculating your emissions

Carbon offsets are a way of compensating for your personal emissions by funding carbon reduction. But before we get into what kind of offsets there are you obviously need to know how much carbon you are emitting as a person. I tried to figure this out for myself recently; however it’s not straight-forward.

If you simply search for carbon footprint you will find a dozen calculators all with differing outputs. I used the same set of data for three different calculators and it gave me three different results ranging from 7.69 tons to 14 tons (this is for our household with my wife). I found that the most comprehensive and most conservative is UC Berkeley’s Cool Climate Calculator which gave me the highest data point. So I stuck with the 14 ton number, which looked about right as the average emission for my country was 5.88t per capita and I know that we fly more than most people (shame!).

Picking an offset provider and a project

So now that I had the number I set out looking for carbon offsets to make my guilt go away. The carbon offsets that an individual can buy usually come in the shape of funding for various clean energy, energy efficiency and conservation projects. There are plenty of providers for carbon offsets like Carbon Footprint, Ecosphere or Climate Care and it’s not easy to pick one. The best option is to look for the “high quality” offsets that have some sort of widely accepted certification (like QAS or VCS). I gave some of these guys a ring to see how their projects work. Most of them are for profit and they work with a number of charity organisations and projects by providing funding for them. Usually the projects focus on the Developing World and they come with an estimated reduction of CO2 emissions. $1 of funding is thus translated into tons of CO2 emissions avoided. You convert your ton of emissions into dollars and — Voila! — your guilt and responsibility is gone. Except it’s not as easy as that.

Unfortunately the calculations for the carbon emission savings are not very transparent (if available at all) so you don’t exactly know what you are getting for your buck. Even if you go for a certified project getting a first hand, objective picture on how the project fares and whether the resulting carbon savings are maintained in the long run is extremely difficult. So even though buying carbon offsets online are a convenient option, I wanted to do something more tangible to offset my own 14 tons of dirty contribution.

My way of making sure my offset works

I didn’t have to get too creative to figure out that planting trees could be a great way to both offsetting my own emissions and going about it in a way that I can personally oversee. Now the only slight problem I came across was maths. After looking at various sources I figured that a young tree can absorb around 6–7kgs of carbon dioxide annually. That means that I would have to plant at least 2000 trees to cover our emissions (yes, trees tend to take in more carbon as they grow but not all trees survive so the overall rate of absorption over an area doesn’t change much). Luckily I got recommended to a local community forest project called Myforest which does the planting and maintaining bit for you.

Another thing I looked at was cost. Normally offset projects range $8 to $10 per ton so in my case I would have to pay up to $140 per year. But going for the custom tree planting project is in a different league. I figured that planting 2000 trees will set me back $3,346, 40% of which is maintenance. But in the latter case there is no annually recurring cost and the emission reductions last as long as the trees live (50yrs+). Therefore this option looked as a more attractive investment on a 24 year long time-span. Anyway, calculations aside I just felt much better about being 100% certain that the CO2 reductions are in place and that they will stay there for as long as I am around. So I went along with this option.

Offsets are not the solution but they are better than nothing

Now, having said all this, I need to mention that carbon offsets — even if they are directly overseen by you — are not the best way of stopping and reversing climate change. That would be the reduction of emissions. However since our species haven’t yet figured out how to even get started with emission reductions, we need to start finding ways on a personal level. But that’s not easy. So in addition to working on your own reduction, I believe buying carbon offsets is better than taking no action.

And urgent action is what we need as we confront the biggest challenge we have ever faced.

About the author

I am a tech CEO and person who realised that climate change is the utmost threat to us. I write about climate change to help people understand the problem better and inspire them to do more about this crisis. The opinions expressed are my own.