Understanding Australian Infrastructure Carbon Reduction Initiative 2 Understanding Australian Infrastructure Carbon Red | Page 3

an offset website, uses the online tools to calculate the emissions of their trip, and then pays the offset
company to reduce emissions elsewhere in the world by the same amount – thus making the flight "carbon
neutral".
Offset schemes vary widely in terms of the cost, though a fairly typical fee would be around £8/$12 for
each tonne of CO2 offset. At this price, a typical British family would pay around £45 to neutralise a year's
worth of gas and electricity use, while a return flight from London to San Francisco would clock in at
around £20 per ticket.
Increasingly, many products are also available with carbon neutrality included as part of the price. These
range from books about environmental topics through to high-emission cars (new Land Rovers include
offsets for the production of the vehicle and the first 45,000 miles of use).
Over the past decade, carbon offsetting has become increasingly popular, but it has also become – for a
mixture reasons – increasingly controversial.
Is the whole concept of offsetting a scam?
Traditionally, much of the criticism of offsetting relates to the planting of trees. Some of these concerns
are valid, but in truth most of the best-known carbon offset schemes have long-since switched from tree
planting to clean-energy projects – anything from distributing efficient cooking stoves through to
capturing methane gas at landfill sites. Energy-based projects such as these are designed to make quicker
and more permanent savings than planting trees, and, as a bonus, to offer social benefits. Efficient cooking
stoves, for instance, can help poor families save money on fuel and improve their household air quality –
a very real benefit in many developing countries.