Offset your business’ carbon footprint

You can offset your business’ carbon footprint by calculating your greenhouse gas emissions and then purchasing credits from emission reduction projects.

Reduce your emissions

Before you consider offsetting your carbon footprint, you should ensure that you have considered other ways of reducing your emissions. Other actions you should take first are:

  • avoid emissions in the first place, for example by using video conferencing instead of traveling
  • use resources more efficiently, for example you could install energy efficient lighting
  • generate or buy energy from renewable sources.
The Carbon Trust has produced a guide for businesses that want to offset emissions they cannot avoid or reduce.

Emission reduction projects

You may want to purchase credits from an emission reduction project to offset your business’ or your customers' air emissions that cannot be avoided or reduced, for example if you are a travel company you can purchase credits on behalf of your customers who want to offset their emissions from flying.

Emission reduction projects help prevent or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Examples of emission reduction projects include:

  • renewable energy schemes 
  • energy efficiency projects 
  • planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide (sequestration) 
  • capturing methane from landfill sites 
  • setting up sustainable transport schemes, eg using biofuels 
  • replacing inefficient machinery with cleaner alternatives.

There are three main types of emission reduction projects:

  • clean development mechanism (CDM) 
  • joint implementation (JI) 
  • voluntary emission reduction (VER).

Types of emission reduction projects

   CDM projects  JI projects  VER projects
Location Developing countries Developed countries Anywhere
Type of credit created  Certified emission reduction (CER) Emission reduction unit (ERU) Voluntary emission reduction (VER)
Approval process Formal process under the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol Formal process under the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol No formal international process. The UK government has created a quality assurance scheme for carbon offsetting.

Further information on emissions reduction projects

In this guideline: