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 Opens new window

How does offsetting work?

First you need to calculate the emissions you produce – you can do this using the ‘Calculate your carbon footprint’ link above.

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.

Choosing an offset

Offsets with the quality mark

The Quality Assurance Scheme for Carbon Offsetting has been created to help you choose a good quality offset.

Carbon offsets that meet requirements set by the government can be sold with a quality mark by an offset provider. If you want to buy one of these offsets, look for the quality mark at the top of this page or see the link below.

The quality 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 
  
• cancel the credits within a year of your buying them, and ensure that the same credit isn't bought twice 
  
• have clear prices for their credits (how much they cost per tonne) 
  
• give you information about the role of offsetting in tackling climate change and advice on reducing your carbon footprint
  

• More about the government's carbon offsetting quality mark Opens new window

• Find a list of approved offsets Opens new window

Offsets without the quality mark

The government can only vouch for the quality of offsets sold through the Quality Assurance Scheme.  If you want to buy offsets that don’t carry the quality mark, you might like to consider:

• checking that the offsets represent a real reduction in carbon emissions
  
• checking that this has been verified by a third party
  

Where does the money go?

There are many different types of offsetting projects, generally involving 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 solar cookers and heat retention containers for cooking, heating, sterilising water and preserving food
• introducing energy efficiency measures at a resort hotel in India
• harnessing river hydropower 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.

More useful links

• ACT ON CO2 to reduce your carbon footprint Opens new window

• View the 'My CO2' film