Carbon offsetting
La offsetting emissions (or Carbon offsetting) is an activity that allows you to balance your impact on global warming by financing actions that can avoid, reduce or remove the emissions of Greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
The Carbon offsetting It is a fundamental part of the solution to climate change: it is necessary to act as soon as possible, and to mitigate its impact the compensation of CO₂ eq plays a fundamental role. By supporting certified projects, you will capture a certain amount of greenhouse gases emitted with your activities, reducing your impact on the environment.
How do you do the compensation properly?
The compensation, to be carried out correctly, must comply with a series of requirements that international standards such as Verified Carbon Standard and Gold Standard define and verify. Amateur solutions that are not certified according to these international standards are always to be avoided:
- you must always consider only the CO₂ already avoided/captured (do not project what will be captured in the future, for example throughout the life of the plant);
- additionality is a fundamental criterion, the project must be developed with the sole purpose of capturing CO₂ and its economic sustainability derives from that. If, for example, I consider fruit trees, they have probably been planted and are cared for to produce fruit and the CO₂ they capture is not really additional compared to the case in which we had not invested in compensation, but they would have been there anyway. The difference between planting a tree and offsetting is important to understand. Here it is explained in this article: Tree-washing: difference between tree-planting and offsetting;
- the CO₂ that is avoided/captured must not already be considered in other carbon balances (for example, the Italian State, which includes in its balance sheet all the forest heritage on national soil);
- the project must always contemplate managing CO₂ throughout its duration, to be sure that the CO₂ captured is permanent.
Then there are countless more technical criteria that certified compensation solutions must guarantee, making them the correct solution to have a concrete impact in the fight against climate change.
What is the difference between compensation and neutralization?
Compensation (offsetting) includes within it the”Carbon removal”: a specific emission compensation activity that involves the removal (or sequestration) of greenhouse gases (typically CO₂) from the atmosphere.
Compensation through 'carbon removal' is termed neutralization, since greenhouse gases are directly captured/removed/sequestered from the atmosphere, in a word 'neutralized'.
→ Do you want to start a path of environmental sustainability for your company? Contact us and find out how we can help you.
