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Offset the emissions you cannot reduce

Offsetting is about investing in projects that save or remove carbon elsewhere to balance the emissions that you have generated. When you offset with us, we will use certified carbon credits to ensure your offsetting is accounted for correctly and we will ask you to contribute towards our tree planting programme.

Why do we use both carbon credits and tree planting?

Tree planting is a highly beneficial way to offset greenhouse gas emissions as it physically removes carbon from the atmosphere and helps to promote biodiversity. This is why we ask everyone who is offsetting with us to contribute towards our tree-planting programme. The downside is that the carbon is removed as the tree grows so it takes years for the full effect to be realised. This makes tree-planting unsuitable to offset emissions that have already happened. Also, although we take every care to ensure that our trees are nurtured for at least 50 years, the future is uncertain and there is no way to guarantee that every tree will remove the same amount of carbon and that they will never be cut down.

For this reason, we also purchase and retire carbon credits, which are independently certified to have saved a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent for each credit purchased. This means that, once we have calculated your carbon footprint accurately, you can be confident that you have offset the right amount to support your claim to be carbon neutral.

Our tree planting programmeAlder saplings planted in the UK

We have partnered with 9Trees Carbon Offsetting CIC to create a new woodland in the UK. 9Trees is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company, set up by a group of people determined to make a positive impact on the environment. With years of experience in nature conservation, promoting native wildlife and sustainable woodlands whilst creating much needed countryside jobs throughout the UK is at the core of 9Tree's mission.

We chose 9 Trees as our partner for a number of reasons:

  • We are not in this just to plant trees and to walk away. We are creating woodlands that will be nurtured, with our partners, for a minimum of 50 years. Our conservation expertise means that we are planting the right trees in the right places.
  • We don’t plant monocultures that have no benefit for local wildlife; we do plant a mixture of native tree species that are selected for each location to match the needs of wildlife.
  • We don’t plant trees on valuable habitats that would be destroyed by trees; we do check that the tree-planting will enhance the local environment before we start.
  • We don’t take your money and just send pictures of generic trees; we show you precisely where the trees are and what they are, and offer opportunities for you and your team to visit the woodland and to carry out some of the work.
  • We don’t use contractors without checking them out first; we do vet all our contractors before we use them, and we try to use people that have been recommended by the landowner when we can. We work hard to create local jobs for each woodland.
  • We don’t double-count our trees; we do account for each individual tree, and its capacity to capture carbon is counted only once and is attributed to a specific subscriber or business partner. We maximise its ability to capture carbon for at least 50 years by nurturing and managing our woodlands to check that the potential of our trees and their benefits to the local environment is met.

Benefits of tree planting

Tree planting has a wide number of environmental benefits, beyond tackling climate change:

  • Each tree that is planted and nurtured for 50 years removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locks it up in its biomass.
  • When done correctly, trees create and restore habitat for wildlife and increase biodiversity.
  • Trees stabilise the soil and help prevent further soil degradation.
  • Trees add to the beauty and diversity of the countryside helping inspire the next generation of conservationists
  • Our programme helps to create much needed jobs in the countryside.

 also offer a personal carbon offsetting subscription. Please visit their website for more details.

Our carbon credit portfolio

We have carefully put together a portfolio of carbon credits that are all independently certified by the Gold Standard, so you can be confident that the carbon savings are real. Our projects also have additional social and environmental benefits beyond carbon savings.

Once you have purchased your credits, we will retire them in the Gold Standard public registry to prevent double counting and to put your offset on the public record.

In this way, we ensure that you meet the best practice principles of offsetting; verifiability; additionality; permanence; and avoidance of negative consequences.

Improved cookstoves for East Africa

Improved cookstoves for East Africa

Exposure to indoor cooking smoke is the world’s leading killer of children under five and is reported to be responsible for around four million deaths per year. In addition, Malawi alone loses 2,000km2 of forest a year due to 93% of the country’s energy demand coming from wood fuel. 91% of rural households use traditional three-stone stoves that use a lot of wood, produce prodigious smoke and cook food relatively slowly.

The domestic cook-stove model is called the Chitetezo Mbaula in Malawi and Canarumwe in Rwanda. This stove can be used as a portable stove or can be fixed and has a laboratory test efficiency of 30.6%, more than three times the efficiency of the baseline three-stone stoves, which results in reduced fuel consumption, improved heat transfer, raising the cooking pot to the hottest point above the flame and improved heat retention. The ceramic stove is produced locally, using locally-available materials, creating employment in a sustainable industry. The project has reached more than 3.5 million Malawians since 2006 and provides income to about 3000 people, mostly women.

The Chitetezo Mbaula stove

Benefits of the project

    Safer childhoods:

    • The vast majority of hospitalised burn victims in Malawi are under the age of six years old. Hot liquid scalds and open flame burns are the most common type of injury. The project’s improved cookstoves are safer than traditional cooking methods because the stove’s structure shields the fire to contain heat and so protects against burns.

    Employment:

    • 61% of Malawians live on less than US$1.25 per day. The vast majority are subsistence farmers dependent on increasingly erratic rains.
    • Hestian cookstoves are made using local materials, fostering local ingenuity and self-reliance. Implementation is sub-contracted to locally owned businesses and social enterprises resulting in skills diversification and job creation.
    • 25 jobs are created for every 1,000 households reached by the project. More than 2,000 jobs have been created to date.
    • 67% of total employed by the project are women, many of whom never before had a source of income.

    Reduced household labour and improved livelihoods:

    • Hestian’s verified reports show that 20,000 households using the Chitetezo Mbaula can generate approximately US$400,000 in labour savings in terms of cooking time and fuel collection.

    Stable Farming Environments:

    • Project stoves save up to 80% firewood compared to an open fire.
    • Households can save on average 1 tonne of wood per year.
    • With less firewood demand, there is also less pressure on the local natural environment which can result in reduced soil erosion, less sedimentation of rivers and avoided damage to hydro-electric power generators.
    • Biodiversity and forest resources are enhanced and local farming benefits greatly.

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    Gold Standard Certified Project


    Gold Standard Certified Project

    GS01265


    This project supports Sustainable Development Goals...


    Renewable, Community Biogas in India

    Renewable, Community Biogas in India

    Most Indian families rely on firewood and kerosene to meet their daily energy needs for cooking. Each week, women and children collect firewood from the nearby forests, which eventually in a longer period contributes to deforestation. Traditional cooking methods based on firewood also cause respiratory and ocular infections among users, mainly women and children. Eventually, the use of chemical fertilizers for agriculture reduces the soil yield and its fertility. Providing each family with a biogas tank directly contributes to reduce the pressure on wood resources and allows beneficiaries to produce their own natural fertilizers for their crops.

    Biogas is a renewable energy, produced via the fermentation and decomposition of animal dung retained inside an airtight tank (known as a digester).

    Biogas digesterIn the context of the project in Telangana and Karnataka states, the biogas will be used for daily cooking and heating purposes. The use of biogas will replace the use of firewood and thereby reduce the rate of deforestation in the project area. The fermented animal dung (known as biogas slurry) is rich in nutrients and can be used as an organic fertilizer for agriculture.

    The project aims to construct 5000 biogas units. Each household in the project will be provided with one biogas unit, allowing access to clean and renewable energy for daily cooking needs

    Run by the GoodPlanet Foundation, this project is implemented in the Sidlaghatta, Devanahalli, Doddaballapura, Tumkur and Gubbi districts of the Karnataka state in India. It has 3 specific goals:

    • Developing renewable energies through the construction and maintenance of individual biodigester
    • Improving socioeconomic and environmental status of the beneficiaries
    • Promoting sustainable agriculture with the organic fertilizer (use of biogas slurry)

    Environmental Impacts

    • Implementation of a renewable, clean and sustainable energy technology
    • Reduction of pressure on forests
    • Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions

    Socioeconomic Impacts

    • Reduction of expenses on fuel and chemical fertilizers
    • Improved access to clean source of energy: time savings especially for women and children who spent long hours to collect wood for cooking
    • Reduction of respiratory and ocular infections related to indoor air pollution
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    Gold Standard Certified Project


    Gold Standard Certified Project

    GS00716

    This project supports Sustainable Development Goals...



    Biomass project in Europe

    Fossil fuel replacement in Europe


    This project supports Sustainable Development Goals...


    This project replaces fossil fuels in a wood processing manufacturing plant in the Russian Federation with biomass and hence leads to a substantial reduction in the plant’s greenhouse gas emissions. This project has enhanced a more sustainable development and has led to substantial social, economic & environmental improvements in the whole region.

    The KronoClimate project encompasses the sustainable resource management of the wood manufacturing plant Kronostar. The main goals of the project are to replace fossil fuels (mostly peat and heavy oil) by biomass in the factory's central energy generation, to implement a regional management system for wood wastes and to promote FSC certified forest management for the supply of raw materials.

    The project reduces greenhouse gas emissions by substituting CO2-neutral biomass for the commonly used fossil fuels in the central process of heat generation and avoids methane emissions by implementing a regional waste management system. Heat generation is done with modern, efficient and reliable biomass boilers using a naturally abundant energy source. FSC and waste management improves the overall environmental situation.

    Environmental impacts

    • 459,300 tonnes of CO2e saved per year
    • Sustainable forest management prevents deforestation and protects ecology and habitats
    • Improved management of regional wood waste
    Gold Standard Certified Project


    Gold Standard Certified Project

    GS00638

      Is our offsetting suitable for both Carbon neutral and Net Zero?

      Whilst offsetting is a fundamental part of both carbon neutral and net zero programmes, the way it is used in each type of programme is quite different:

      Carbon Neutral offsetting

      Net Zero offsetting

      • Done immediately
      • Can use mix of reductions and removals to offset all of your footprint now
      • Done only after 90% of your carbon footprint has been eliminated, reduced or substituted
      • Can only use removals to offset the residual emissions left after eliminating, reducing or substituting

      We don't currently include any certified carbon credits based on carbon removals since there are very few currently available and the price is high. This should not be a huge problem as any business wanting to achieve Net Zero should be focussing on eliminating, reducing and substituting 90% of their emissions for the time being.

      Note: It is perfectly possible to combine Carbon Neutral offsetting with a plan to achieve Net Zero.



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