Contact Please contact us at: Offsetters Climate Neutral Society Telephone: 604-720-4223 Or send an email to info@offsetters.ca FAQs What is a carbon offset? How will offsetting my CO2 reduce the threat of climate change? How much reduction in GHG emissions do we really need? Why do you focus so much on air travel? Is flying the only activity I need to be concerned about? Are all carbon offsets created equal? What is a high quality carbon offset project? Is Offsetting a permit to pollute? Why Offsetters? Is Offsetters a for-profit initiative? Can I deduct my offset purchase from my taxes? What is your overhead cost? How do you choose which projects to fund? How do I know that my money is really reducing GHG in the atmosphere? Do you use tree planting to offset? Can I assign my donation to a particular project? How can this be so inexpensive? How do you calculate the CO2 emissions for my flight? Why do different offset companies have different prices? How does your system with WestJet work? Will I receive confirmation for my online purchase? Will I receive confirmation for my WestJet ticket purchase? How will these offsets be counted under the Kyoto Protocol? Can I purchase from Offsetters if I live outside Canada? What is a carbon offset? A “carbon offset” occurs when an individual or organization emits a given amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) but invests in measures that will pull the equivalent volume of GHG out of the atmosphere or prevent other emissions from taking place at all. Offsetters primarily invests in energy efficiency projects. We enable developers and property owners to install low GHG emitting systems in place of traditional systems with high GHG emissions by investing the difference in cost between the systems. Because the low GHG system would not have been selected without our investment, this investment is an offset. How will offsetting my CO2 reduce the threat of climate change? Your offset purchase, pooled with other buyers of offsets from Offsetters Climate Neutral Society, directly results in reduced GHG emissions. Furthermore, with every project we will demonstrate the feasibility and environmental and social benefit of emerging energy saving technologies. So your investment not only offsets your own emissions but also promotes the mainstream adoption of alternative energy systems that do not rely upon high consumption of fossil fuel. How much reduction in GHG emissions do we really need? In order to stabilize the earth’s climate we need to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 70%. To do this, we need to bring about lasting change. The projects we initiate and promote not only deliver GHG reductions of 70% or more, but are economically attractive in the long run and will sustain themselves once established. Why do you focus so much on air travel? Air travel currently accounts for about 3% of global CO2 emissions, but airplane emissions are increasing by about 3% every year. Furthermore, the altitude at which airplanes emit CO2, other greenhouse gases, and water vapour into the air makes air travel particularly damaging to the atmosphere. While the per kilometre emissions (per traveler) of a jet plane are not dramatically higher than those of a car, the challenge is that a single cross-continent trip is almost half of the distance that the average car travels in a year! Plane travel allows us to live a truly global lifestyle, but it has truly global impacts as well. Is flying the only activity I need to be concerned about? No. Many other activities release greenhouse gasses as well: heating our homes, using fossil-fuel generated electricity, driving cars and many industrial processes are all major sources of emissions. Go to our homepage for options to offset your lifestyle emissions or call us to help calculate and offset your business emissions. To calculate and offset the emissions from your car, visit our partner website at www.cooldrivepass.ca. Are all carbon offsets created equal? No. Voluntary carbon offsets are an unregulated market at present. Many projects promoted as “offsets” today fail to meet the basic standards of additionality and permanence. Remember that if a low GHG project would have taken place even without your investment, then you cannot claim to be carbon neutral. What is a high quality carbon offset project? An Offsetters high quality offset project has five (5) key traits: It is “additional”: Offsetters investments lead to real reductions in total greenhouse gas emissions by enabling projects that would otherwise not take place. Many non-Offsetters projects fail to meet this test. It meets or exceeds Canadian standards: Our projects meet or exceed Canadian environmental and social standards. Many non-Offsetters projects (e.g., pig farms in Latin America) would fail Canadian standards in animal care and water pollution prevention. It is easily verified by a third party: Our clients can feel confident that their contribution has measurable benefit. It provides lasting environmental benefit: We favour energy efficiency technologies and renewable energy over tree planting. We can measure how much greenhouse gas savings are created in energy efficiency and renewable projects. It is socially beneficial: Offsetters projects bring social benefits as well as environmental gains. This ensures that there is social desire to sustain them in the long run. Is Offsetting a permit to pollute? Definitely not! We encourage every individual, family, and organization to adopt environmentally friendly practices: walking or cycling instead of driving; teleconferencing instead of flying; etc. But there are still many activities for which we do not yet have low GHG alternatives. Offsetting is one way individuals and companies can actively contribute to sustainability by taking responsibility for their impacts. Tracking the climate cost of one’s practices (in both tonnes of emissions and in dollars) leads to awareness and awareness leads to changed behaviour. When we know how much we emit, and how much it’s costing us, we act to reduce it. Why Offsetters? Offsetters provides a cost effective, simple and efficient method to reduce the negative climate impacts of our daily lives. Every offset purchase not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but also contributes to sustainable development and improved livability through the projects that we invest in. We are committed to providing sustainable, efficient and cost effective solutions to the growing community of people and companies who are actively taking responsibility for their impacts. Our role is three fold: To help you realize the magnitude of GHG emissions associated with various activities; To identify, initiate and attain third party verification for projects that pass our criteria for offset quality; and To strategically invest the monies from your offset purchases in these projects. Is Offsetters a for-profit initiative? No! Offsetters Climate Neutral Society is a not-for-profit organization registered in Canada. Offsetters was established by two professors now at The University of British Columbia. In 2005, after an evaluation of existing offset providers, we realized that many companies that offer offsets have huge overhead costs or profit margins and that little of the funds generated from offset purchases were used in achieving GHG reductions. We also found that many offsets offered to the public came from questionable sources that may not provide real reductions in GHG emissions. We founded Offsetters because we wanted more of what you invest to go directly into credible, high quality offset projects. Can I deduct my offset purchase from my taxes? Businesses can write off offset payments as part of their cost of doing business. Because we are not a registered charity, however, we cannot issue you a tax receipt. What is your overhead cost? We incorporated as a not-for-profit to make our motives clear: to help our clients to realize maximum climate benefit for their investment. We keep our administration and operating costs at a minimum to allow the lion’s share of your funds to go towards the projects. In 2006, just 20% of funds received were retained to cover our operations. How do you choose which projects to fund? The first screen is that we only invest in high quality offset projects with verifiable climate benefits. Our domestic (Canadian) projects are focused on energy efficiency (e.g., efficient lighting and ground-source heat pumps) and renewable energy (e.g., run of river hydro, and biodiesel). We are always interested in exploring new high quality offset projects. If you would like to know more about applying to Offsetters for project funds, please email us. Our international projects are managed by ClimateCare (www.climatecare.org), the renowned UK-based organization. ClimateCare specializes in the identification, implementation and verification of offset projects in developing countries. For more information about these projects, go to our projects page. How do I know that my money is really reducing GHG in the atmosphere? You can be confident that purchase of an Offsetters carbon offset will achieve the promised emissions reduction because we have dramatically shortened the supply chain from investor (you) to project. Unlike many offset providers, which outsource project management or purchase offsets on the open market, we play a hands-on role in all of our domestic projects, ensuring that they are implemented as proposed and that projected GHG savings are realized. For our international projects, we only source from ClimateCare (www.climatecare.org), a respected UK-based organization that plays this role on our behalf. Do you use tree planting to offset? There are many good reasons to plant trees, but their net benefit as carbon offsets is problematic. Trees certainly do capture CO2 from the atmosphere, but tree planting as a long-term solution to GHG management faces two challenges: Reforestation initiates do not meet the permanence requirement: forests release their stored CO2 back into the atmosphere when they die, are harvested, or burn. This challenge is accentuated by climate change itself, which is changing the ecosystems to which tree species are adapted, leading to disease, infestation, and new fire patterns. Tree planting is already well established and well funded. It is not clear that additional funds provided to tree planting (especially in Canada) will lead to any additional GHG reductions. Nevertheless, approximately 20% of global emissions each year are from deforestation and forest fires. Currently, less than 20% of Offsetters’ annual CO2 liabilities are in reforestation. This is being reduced and is expected to fall to less than 10% of our 2007 portfolio. Currently the only "carbon sequestration" project that we invest in is a rainforest restoration project in Uganda. For this project CO2 sequestration rates are calculated by SGS Forestry and the project has attained certification from the Forest Stewardship Council. Progress is monitored by FACE Foundation. Can I assign my donation to a particular project? You will soon be able to specify whether you would like to purchase International or Domestic (Canadian) offset projects. In general, we pool your money to fund a portfolio of projects reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This allows us to best manage our GHG reduction commitments, by balancing cost (some projects are more expensive per tonne of CO2 than others but generate a wider range of sustainability benefits) and risk (some projects offer great rewards but carry an irreducible risk of not delivering as much emission reductions as expected). If you are a company in a position to offset a large number of emissions (>10,000 tonnes), we can match your funds with a particular project. How can this be so inexpensive? We have a portfolio of projects, some less expensive, some more. But the combined purchasing power of all of our members gives us considerable financial power. Three important factors underlie the affordability of our high quality offsets: Offsetters pays just the incremental (not total) cost of renewable energy and/or energy efficient systems over traditional systems. Our investments are used to tip the balance to make clean energy projects cost effective for the project proponent, thus meeting our “additionality” requirement. In some cases our investment leverages other funds, making this even more cost effective. Once installed, alternative energy systems will reduce emissions for their entire installed life. For example, installing a ground-source heatpump in lieu of a gas furnace in a housing complex leads to energy cost savings of 70% and GHG reductions of 80%. Because the system can be expected to last at least 15 years, the total GHG savings of the heatpump system are vast relative to our initial investment. We are a not-for-profit organization committed to achieving maximum climate benefit for your investment. How do you calculate the CO2 emissions for my flight? The calculations we use are based on a report on the climate impacts of aviation by the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University -- Aviation Emissions and Offsets. Four factors are assessed in our calculator: The fuel consumption rate of the aircraft being used. The seats occupied and freight on-board; The overall impact of GHG emissions in the stratosphere (i.e. a multiplier for the altitude at which emissions are released); and The distance flown. Thus, in calculating emissions for a passage on long haul flight we take the average fuel burn figures for a Boeing 747 and an Airbus A360 as published by the EU. We divide this by the average total number of seats (not occupied seats). We then subtract fuel use for freight carried on the average long haul aircraft. GHG impacts in the upper atmosphere are estimated to be double the amount of CO2 emissions. We double the fuel CO2 and finally multiply this GHG emission rates by the great-circle distance between departure and arrival airports. For short haul flights we use a similar method to the above, but use the fuel consumption for a Boeing 737 as the reference aircraft. As we gain access to more sophisticated databases on aircraft serving each route and the number of seats occupied we will continually refine our calculator to reflect emissions associated with your flight. Why do different offset companies have different prices? When you buy an offset, the price will be determined by two factors: The amount of CO2 that is calculated from your activity; and The cost of the project supported per tonne of GHG avoided. The CO2 emissions calculation will vary slightly according to the assumptions made in the methodology. The main difference is more likely to be the price of the offsets being sponsored. As noted elsewhere in these FAQ, we are proud of the quality of offsets and efficiency of our operations. How does your system with WestJet work? The complimentary “climate friendly” flying option with WestJet is only available to WestJet customers who connect to the airline’s online reservation system by first going to Offsetters homepage and clicking on the WestJet logo on the lower left hand of the screen. This will automatically connect the customer to the WestJet flight reservation page where a portion of their ticket price will be used for purchasing complimentary offsets on their behalf. From the customer’s perspective, a “climate friendly” booking is identical to a regular one in terms of cost, availability and high quality service. The only difference is that when the customer books their flight, the contribution from WestJet to Offsetters makes their flight “climate friendly”. Will I receive confirmation for my online purchase? By purchasing from Offsetters, you’ll get all of the following: The good feeling of taking action towards mitigating a serious environmental problem, and the right to demand that others do the same; A confirmation of purchase from PayPal to the email you provide; and An E-certificate verifying the amount of CO2 your purchase has removed from the atmosphere and showing that you are part of a growing community of people and companies which is actively taking responsibility for its actions. Will I receive confirmation for my WestJet ticket purchase? No. If you click through Offsetters to WestJet’s online booking system via our homepage, you will not receive an acknowledgement of the offsets that WestJet purchases on your behalf. There are two reasons for this: WestJet protects the privacy of its customers and avoids any breaches of confidentially from passing your travel identity and itinerary back to us; and The offset payments are made by WestJet and it is their donation which is acknowledged by Offsetters. How will these offsets be counted under the Kyoto Protocol? Both international emission reductions and those in Canada lead to a lowering of Canada’s emissions inventory. Can I purchase from Offsetters if I live outside Canada? Certainly! Global warming is a global problem and its impacts are not limited to any geographic boundary. You can purchase from Offsetters online with your credit card or PayPal account, no matter where you live. Why Offsetters?