Website of the UK government

How to tackle your emissions

There are several steps you can take to tackle your emissions:

• calculate how much carbon dioxide you produce at home and through the transport you use (this is your 'carbon footprint')
• avoid or reduce your emissions, for example by walking or taking public transport, or by turning your heating down
• offset your unavoidable emissions

• Calculate your carbon footprint - ACT ON CO2 carbon calculator Opens new window

How do offsetting schemes work?

First you need to calculate the emissions you produce. You can then choose to offset some or all of your unavoidable emissions. For example, you could offset your car mileage for a year or a flight abroad.

Next, you buy an equivalent amount of ‘carbon credits’ from projects that have saved carbon dioxide. These projects rely on your offsetting money to fund them.

Where does the money go?

There are many different types of offsetting projects. They generally involve energy efficiency or renewable energy. Here are some examples of the kind of projects that could produce a credit used for offsetting:

• providing people in Aceh, Indonesia with newly developed solar cookers and heat retention containers for cooking, heating, sterilising water and preserving food
• implementing energy efficiency measures at a resort hotel in India
• harnessing river hydropower (without dams) in Fiji
• establishing the first wind energy plant in Cyprus
• collecting methane to generate electricity from landfill sites in Durban, South Africa
• generating electricity from the residue produced by a sugar mill in Ecuador

Some offsetting schemes involve planting trees but it can take many years for the environmental benefits to be realised. It's also difficult to measure how much carbon dioxide is actually saved. For this reason, very few such projects have currently been approved by the United Nations. It's not expected that offsets from such projects will carry the quality mark.

Choosing an offsetting scheme

More and more companies, including airlines, are setting up schemes for their customers to offset their emissions.

The Quality Assurance Scheme for Carbon Offsetting has been created to help you choose a good quality scheme. Carbon offsets that meet specific requirements set by the government can be sold with a quality mark by an offset provider. The mark means that the offset provider will:

• calculate your emissions accurately
• sell good quality carbon credits that comply with the Kyoto Protocol and have been checked by the United Nations
• deliver the credits within a year of your buying them, and ensure that the same credit isn't bought twice
• have transparent prices for their credits (how much they cost per tonne)
• provide you with information about the role of offsetting in tackling climate change and advice on reducing your carbon footprint

Some providers will sell offsets both with and without the quality mark. This doesn't mean the offsets without the quality mark are necessarily of poor quality. Instead, it means that the government can't vouch for the quality of those offsets, perhaps because of the type of emission credits they use.

If you would like to purchase offsets not covered by the quality mark, you might like to check you are confident that:

• the offsets represent real emission reductions
  
• the offsets offer other benefits (such as environmental or social) that you would like to support
  

• More about the government's carbon offsetting quality mark Opens new window
• Find a list of approved offsets Opens new window

Is this a ‘cure’ for climate change?

No. Offsetting won’t reverse the effects already caused by carbon dioxide. The environmental harm caused by these emissions cannot be undone. However, by saving an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide elsewhere, you can help to minimise current global emissions. 

More useful links

• ACT ON CO2 to reduce your carbon footprint
• View the 'My CO2' film