Carbon Offsetting Companies

Some of the major corporations like HSBC and Aviva have been offsetting their emissions and have been able to become carbon neutral. There is definite growth in the number of companies that are becoming carbon neutral. The projects being supported by them are helping poor communities in developing countries access energy and generate livelihoods. The majority of the offset projects are located in India and China. In such countries there are barriers to the development of voluntary offset generating projects, with the limited availability of finance not being the least of them.

Given the past trends and announcements being made by regulators and the industry, the future does look bright for voluntary carbon offsets, or as we say it, The Trend is Blue customers.

in buildings, providing alternatives to business travel, and sourcing renewable energy, wherever possible. HSBC purchases high quality Voluntary Emissions Reductions (VERs) on the international carbon market. In 2010, HSBC was responsible for 1,017,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions in total, including energy use and emissions from business travel. HSBC currently collects environmental data for 95 per cent of its operations. This figure has been scaled up to represent 100 per cent of the organisation and to account for uncertainty factors in the monitoring and reporting process.
In 2010, HSBC bought VERs from projects located in China and India: renewable wind projects, small scale hydro projects, an industrial energy efficiency project.

This purchase offsets global carbon emissions from energy use and travel in 2009 and some additional emissions for 2008, which were captured as part of Barclays improved data management and estimation methods.

Aviva’s emissions amounted to 127,685 tonnes of CO2e in 2010. To compensate for the remaining emissions that cannot be avoided, since 2006 they have purchased more than 400,000 tonnes of carbon offsets from the voluntary carbon market, to one of two robust standards: the Gold Standard or Voluntary Carbon Standard. Aviva offset 105% of its emissions in this way again in 2010. This also enables Aviva to support leading carbon offset projects implemented through non-governmental organisations and other expert partners. Aviva sources the majority of these from projects in developing countries where Aviva has a market presence. The exception is Africa, where it purchases offsets because the African continent will suffer more from the effects of climate change, both in terms of speed and impact. In Kenya, for example, Aviva has been involved in an energy-efficient stove programme that is addressing unsustainable deforestation caused by charcoal production and inefficient use of wood, but which also has wider benefits for the community.

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has implemented a number of state-of-the-art solutions and improved their carbon efficiency by 8.6 per cent as a result. But in order to officially become fully carbon-neutral, they needed to purchase carbon credits. In consultation with Carbon Neutral Investments, an independent carbon offsetting specialist, they investigated a number of potential carbon-offsetting schemes looking to select projects that would prove to be both ideologically relevant to their core business and ethically viable too.

It added that a total of £700 million has been made available to green energy projects. Since 2000, Co-op has offset more than 780,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Some of its projects include re-establishment of rainforest within Kibale Forest National Park in Uganda, provision of treadle pumps to local farmers in the West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh states of India and a project to replace the traditional Lao stove with a more efficient version.

it adopted the dual measures of reducing the level of carbon emitted out of its operations and also buying carbon credits to offset the unavoidable carbon footprint generated by the firm.

through energy efficiency measures and the installation of renewable energy generators on its sites. Since 2007 Google has also sought to make itself carbon neutral by purchasing offsets from a range of projects. Projects have included landfill and agricultural methane capture both in the US and internationally. Google focused on methane capture because “methane's impact on warming is very well understood, it's easy to measure how much methane is captured and the capture wouldn't happen without our financing (for the projects we're investing in, they couldn't make enough money selling the gas).”

of its manufacturing process whilst also seeking to offset an increasing percentage of its carbon emissions through the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) from US renewable projects. In February 2011, the company announced that it would purchase RECs to offset 85% of its US energy usage (Intel, 2011a). Intel’s 2010 Annual Report (Intel, 2011b) highlights the motivations for offsetting its carbon emissions. The company sees a significant risk that the cost of energy from traditional fossil fuel sources will increase as we enter a more carbon constrained economic climate. Intel believes that the solution to this will be found in the development and improvement of renewable energy technology. Intel’s programme of purchasing RECs “is intended to help stimulate the market for green power, leading to additional generating capacity and, ultimately, lower costs.”

organisation GoedeWaar (H&M, 2011b). For the year 2010 the company set itself ambitious new carbon reduction targets. When H&M missed these new targets the company offset the 67,000 tonne shortfall by purchasing carbon credits from projects certified against the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the Gold Standard. The projects were two wind farms in China and an agricultural waste biomass fuel project in India (H&M, 2011b).