At first sight carbon offsetting seems a great way to live a zero carbon life without changing your lifestyle. They are increasingly offered as an option on a foreign holiday to make the holiday air travel guilt free. They work like this. Suppose the estimated greenhouse gas emissions from the holiday flights are 5 tons CO2 per person. You then pay an offset company to fund projects in poor countries that will reduce CO2 emissions by 5 tons. The best known company Climate Care presently charges around £9 per ton, so you would pay £45 per person in this case. The money is used on energy saving projects such as installing wind turbines, and high efficiency wood burning stoves.

That’s how it works for individuals, but the same sort of thing happens on an international scale where it has become very big business indeed. Via the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), if a rich country like the UK finds it difficult to reduce its own emissions, it can pay a poor country to reduce its emissions instead. The justification is that spending in the poor country can be a lot more cost-effective.

The following serious concerns have been raised about offset funded projects:

• the project might have happened anyway without the offset funding
• it may be inadequately implemented and not give the expected carbon savings
• it may displace or otherwise harm local people.

A new UK government ‘kite mark’ suggests that most carbon offset schemes in fact are flawed. Voluntary offset schemes have been heavily criticised for making bogus claims about emissions reductions, and for funding projects that harm poor communities. In a move designed to weed out the carbon cowboys, the government’s proposal is that only offset providers using the CDM will qualify for the government’s seal of approval. This currently excludes all but a handful of offset companies in the UK. Most of the industry has been de-legitimised at a single stroke, including such outfits as Climate Care and the Carbon Neutral Company, who have always taken pains to portray themselves as the good apples in the bad bunch.

There is even worse news when you look at what the CDM entails. As with voluntary offsets, it is designed to shift the burden of cutting emissions onto poorer countries in the South. A range of research has shown that the same problems of corruption, bogus emissions reductions and harm to communities occur within the CDM as with the voluntary offset market.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, the offset concept implies that it is OK to avoid reducing our own emissions. I hope that my previous articles have shown that the risks are far too serious for that to be an option.

If you want to discuss any of the subjects raised, I am very happy to talk to groups of people. My email address is derek.leatherhead@ntlworld.com. I will also try and reply to emails from individuals, either directly or in a future article.