What are Carbon Offsets

Carbon offsets are bought and traded to compensate the greenhouse gas emissions released by a person or an organization. Preferably, we offset emissions when we cannot avoid them while executing our everyday activities. If one releases emissions when another sustainable alternate is available, it is generally objected to by environmentalists. Though offsets can be originated by cutting any of the six main greenhouse gas emissions, a single carbon offset is usually considered as the cutback in harmful gases analogous to one metric ton of carbon dioxide.

In numerous developed nations, companies are assigned caps as to how much carbon dioxide they can generate. Organizations that are unable to keep their emissions within that preset limit must buy offsets to abide by the laws. Other than this compliance market, there is also an emerging market for voluntary purchase of carbon offsets. People who care for the environment purchase offsets to reduce their own carbon footprint even though they are not required by law to do so.

So this is basically how the need for carbon offsets arises, either via government policies that somehow penalize businesses or via rising environmental awareness in voluntary purchasers. But how are offsets produced? Companies that sell you offsets generally acquire them from large projects carried out to reduce GHG emissions anywhere on earth. The objective is to lessen the aggregate emissions released into the atmosphere without worrying about the location of the project.

Greenhouse gases mix into the environment and spread throughout the world rapidly; it doesn’t make any difference at the end of the day if you release methane in United States, Asia or France as the overall impact will be similar for the global environment anyway. For the same reason, numerous carbon offset projects are run in South America even though majority of offset buyers reside in North America and Europe. It works well as curbing CO2 in developing nations is mostly far cheaper than reducing the same amount of emissions in European countries.

This small article won’t enter the debate of carbon offsetting scams. On the whole, carbon offsets have a say in reduction of greenhouse gases if generated by legitimate projects and traded with maximum transparency.