Friday 2 September 2022
What are carbon offset certificates?
Carbon offset certificates are a way to show the amount of carbon emissions that have been avoided by any given project. Each individual certificate corresponds to one tonne of emissions that have been offset.
This is achieved by supporting activities that reduce or negate greenhouse gases (GHG). So, if a business released one tonne of CO2, they could buy a carbon offset certificate that supported part of a project which would proactively avoid emitting an equal amount. This would make the original activity ‘carbon neutral’.
The company could do this in one of two ways. It could choose to invest directly in a project that generates a carbon offsetting credit. Or it could buy the carbon credit from the market, or from experienced carbon offsetting partners like Drax, and reduce its carbon footprint accordingly.