Understanding Carbon Offsets During Travel

As the travel industry continues to pay more attention to its impact on the environment, including how global carbon emissions contribute to climate change, the subject of carbon offsets is being raised more frequently. But for many, offsets are still a mystery.

What are they exactly? How do you “buy” one?

While carbon offsets can be complicated when you get down to the nitty-gritty details, what’s important for travel advisors to know is that they’re an easy way to reduce the impact their travel – and their clients’ travels – have on climate change.

But before advisors bring carbon offsets up to their clients, they need to understand the basics.

Travel Market Report reached out to the experts at South Pole, a company that specializes in developing and implementing comprehensive emission reduction projects, to find out more about carbon offsets. In this, the first of a two-part series, we explain what they are, how they work, how much they cost, and how you can find a project to support. Next week, we discuss how advisors can talk to their clients about the subject.

What is a carbon offset?
The simplest way to think about a carbon offset is with this mathematical equation:

[Amount of carbon you put into the atmosphere] – [Amount of carbon pulled out of the atmosphere by a carbon project] = Atmospheric Impact.

When the number in the first part of the equation is the same as the number in the second, the atmospheric impact is zero, meaning you’ve offset your carbon footprint. 

While there are many ways people put carbon into the atmosphere on a daily basis, when we’re talking about travel, we’re pretty much-talking flying.

“Travel has a carbon footprint associated with it,” said Nick Aster, marketing director, North America for South Pole. “When it comes to travel, by far the most important component of the carbon footprint is aviation… 90 to 95% of this is flights.”

The good news, he said, is that what your or your clients’ footprint is for any given trip is easy to calculate.  

“The airplane burns X amount of fuel over a certain amount of distance,” he explained. “You can determine very easily the amount of carbon dioxide that put in the atmosphere.”

(Tools you can use to calculate the carbon footprint of a flight include the GHG Emissions Calculation Tool or the South Pole Marketplace Calculator.)

And that’s where the offset comes in.

“An offset is essentially the removal of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide that your flight would otherwise put in. Since you can’t do anything about that flight, purchasing an offset of the equivalent amount of carbon oxide will neutralize your travel,” Aster explained.

How does the offsetting process work?
When you or your client purchases carbon offset you’re essentially investing in a “carbon project,” of which there are many different types, located all around the world.

Some of them are nature based.

“There are projects, where, for example, ecosystems are being restored where they were once degraded,” Aster said.

Other nature-based projects might include tree planting or improving agricultural practices that result carbon being pulled out of the atmosphere (also referred to as sequestering).

Some projects are technological. One start-up is designing machines that will pull carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere.

(There are some carbon projects that don’t actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere too. Instead, these projects replace something that would have put carbon in. For example, a project that sees the creation of a wind farm in a developing country, which prevents the construction of a coal plant, which would have added carbon dioxide.)

“Whatever it is, you can calculate how much carbon that project removes from the atmosphere,” Aster said.

To help fund the projects, the operators monetize the carbon elimination by selling what are called “carbon credits.” Each credit is the equivalent of one ton of carbon dioxide pulled from the atmosphere.

When you purchase the equivalent number of carbon credits to match the carbon that your flight put in, you’ve offset your travel.

How much do carbon offsets cost?
Carbon offsets can be as affordable or expensive as you want. On South Pole’s marketplace, offsets range from €10.80 to €60 per ton.

If you buy from Gold Standard, it costs from $10 to $47 per ton.

To put that all into perspective, a roundtrip flight from JFK to LAX puts 1.29 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

With South Pole, you can buy in one-tenth amounts (minimum of one full ton); at Gold Standard, you have to buy full tons. Therefore, offsetting that flight will cost between €14.04 and €78 with South Pole or $20 and $94 with Gold Standard.

What’s a certificate of credit and what does it mean to retire a credit?
When someone purchases carbon credits, they receive a certificate of credit with the assurance their credit has been retired.

Don’t let these terms confuse you.

Think of the certificate as a receipt. You can’t do anything with and you don’t need to hold on to it.

As for the term “retired,” it simply means the action that you paid for – ie the removal of carbon dioxide – has taken place and no one else can sponsor that same removed carbon dioxide that you did.

How to find out about carbon projects?
The main way to purchase carbon offsets is via a marketplace or through a supplier, like an airline that offers offsets for its flights. With the latter, purchasers rarely get to choose the project they want to support. But with marketplaces, purchasers can often choose from a variety of projects, at different price points, located all around the world.

Which project to choose really depends on the priorities of the purchaser.

Price is one factor. But location can be as well. For instance, if your clients are going on safari in Africa, they might want to support a project in Africa. If they’re going to see the Great Wall of China or taking a Mekong River Cruise, they might want to support projects in those destinations.

Another factor is what else the project might be supporting. Many projects create jobs, wrap in building schools, or spreading environmental awareness. It’s not always only removing carbon dioxide.

How to find a marketplace and know the projects on offer are legit?
A google search for carbon offsets produces pages and pages of suppliers selling carbon credits. But not all suppliers and marketplaces are equal. And not all do what they claim.

Finding a supplier of legitimate carbon offsets doesn’t have to be a roadblock for travel advisors or their clients. 

“You want to be certain that a third party has verified projects,” Aster said.

Several organizations set standards and verify projects, but the two main ones are Verra and Gold Standard, the latter of which operates its own marketplace. (Two others you might see mentioned are Climate Action Reserve and American Carbon Registry.)

To know if a project (or marketplace) is legitimate, look for a logo indicating projects have been vetted and approved by one of these bodies.

For instance, the Afognak Island Forest Preservation project operated by South Pole in Alaska features the Verra logo indicating it meets Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard, while the Efficient Cookstoves project in Rwanda features the Gold Standard logo indicating it’s been certified as part of the Gold Standard Voluntary Emissions Reduction (GSVER) program.

The International Carbon Reduction & Offset Alliance offers a full list of vetted carbon offset sellers on its website.