Three Shocking Pitfalls

When we first started to look into the science behind carbon offsets, we were astounded to discover multiple areas where people are being taken for a ride. Take a look and see what you think …

Flights

In recent years we’ve all been brow-beaten into believing that air travel is just about the worst thing that you can do for the environment. Now there is an element of truth in that, planes do emit a lot of carbon, but the issue is widely over-stated. Virtually every source that we have read make the same major errors.

On a long haul flight, around 65% of the payload for a large airliner is typically comprised of air-freight. The passengers, their luggage, their seats and all the other elements that support their travel only accounts for about a third of the total payload. Yet virtually everyone allocates all the the carbon emissions from that flight to the passengers and none to the freight.

Furthermore, almost all sources calculate that a long haul flight usually operates at around 50-60% capacity. But whenever we fly long haul, the flights are invariably full. That means there’s almost twice as many people to share the carbon emissions.

Taking these and other factors into account, we reckon that most sources overstate the carbon emissions for flights by a factor of 4-8 times, which is pretty shocking.

Tree longevity

Most companies that offer carbon offsetting to companies make an assessment of how much carbon you need to offset each year and then milk you for that amount year after year. We find that rather shocking.

When we plant a tree for you, we use the amount of carbon that tree will absorb in the first 1-3 years of it’s life to calculate your initial investment, but we then take into consideration that your trees will keep on growing and keep on absorbing carbon for their whole lives. We conservatively estimate that to be an average of forty years.

This means that after you have paid your initial offsetting fee in the first year, from then on you only need to pay a modest top up, to cover for any loss of trees, plus any further trees needed to cover the expansion of your organisation.

You may well choose to spend more on carbon offsetting each year, but you will do that in the knowledge that you are doing it voluntarily, not being stitched up.

Carbon vs carbon dioxide

Another shocking ‘error’ that can be found in many sources is the statement that for every kilogram of carbon dioxide in the air, you need to sequester a kilogram of carbon. This is simply not true. A kilogram of carbon dioxide contains 0.27 kg of carbon.

In this way, carbon offsetting is often further overstated by a factor of three.