Carbon offsetting attempts to compensate for carbon emissions by generating carbon savings elsewhere and making these available as carbon credits or offsets. Offsets are environmentally beneficial because they bring new revenues to clean energy or forestry projects, making these projects more viable.
At its simplest level, carbon neutrality is achieved when the amount being offset is equal to the carbon footprint. However from a commercial perspective claiming carbon neutrality needs to be handled carefully to protect your brand.
The UK Government, Australian Government, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the CarbonNeutral Company have all recently published guidance specifying what steps an organisation must take for claims of carbon neutrality to be credible.
All of these methodologies include both a focus on reducing carbon emissions as well as ensuring sourcing of high quality carbon offsets. Through the purchase of carbon offsets of equivalent amount of the emissions you cannot reduce, you can “neutralize” the carbon footprint of your business, your event or even products.
The RESET Carbon team has over ten years of direct experience with carbon offsetting and can work with you to:
- Develop an appropriate offsetting strategy
- Source competitively-priced high quality, local carbon offsets to make your company carbon neutral
- Develop and structure carbon neutral products
- Identify and evaluate the potential for carbon offset generation projects within your company
- Structure, contract and deliver offset streams from in-house projects
RESET Carbon’s principle is to deliver real value by driving carbon reductions within businesses. For this reason, we recommend the use of carbon offsets only as part of a comprehensive carbon reduction strategy. We stress the importance of doing a solid carbon footprint and using the right reporting standard to achieve neutrality.
We maintain strong relationships both with standard setting organisations such as the Gold Standard and with leading carbon offset suppliers. While we can help source any kind of offset desired by clients, however in order to ensure that when you pay to offset, your reputational risks are minimized and that real environmental benefits are achieved, we:
- Recommend GOLD STANDARD VERs for their stringent project criteria (renewables and energy efficiency projects only), sustainability benchmarking system, minimum stakeholder consultation requirements and a strong, clear additionality process
- Source only offsets that are traceable in publicly available registry
- Will not source or recommend HFC23 projects
- Will not source pre-issue carbon credits
Why RESET Carbon?
- We do not sell our own offsets: We offer credits advisory and sourcing as extended service only;
- We understand the risks: with a background in quality assurance and the NGO community our team members understand the risks with carbon neutrality claims and will only advise you the most prudent and appropriate credits and messaging.
BSI PAS 2060: the Premium Carbon Neutrality Standard
The Carbon neutrality standard, PAS 2060 developed by the British Standards Institute (BSI) is new standard governing definition of corporate, project, service or event carbon neutrality, released in mid 2010.
The PAS 2060 outlines a series of steps that have to be taken to attain carbon-neutral status, starting with full measurement of a product or firm's carbon footprint using established standards such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol or BSI's PAS 2050 specification. It then requires that steps are taken to reduce the carbon footprint before approved carbon credits are purchased to cover unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions.
A new and unambiguously market-leading standard in terms of rigour and quality, the PAS 2060 provides a credible benchmark for companies seeking to substantiate and communicate your commitment to environmental responsibility – strengthening your CSR strategy, building trust and helping you to win new business.
RESET Carbon’s PAS 2060 service is designed to guide you through this process – from collecting and presenting the right data, planning the most cost-effective reduction programme to robust and succinct messaging in your declaration: we work with you to ensure that your carbon neutral efforts strengthen your brand rather than dilute it.
Not sure where to start? Talk to us.