What is Carbon Offset?
Carbon offset projects are a way to offset your unavoidable emissions through projects that you will contribute to around the world. By supporting climate projects in different parts of the world, you can improve the living conditions of people in difficult climatic conditions while reducing the emission impact of your organization.
What about Carbon Credit?
Although carbon credit is often confused with carbon offset, there is a difference between them. The carbon credit represents the value of 1 ton of CO2e you have reduced thanks to the certified carbon offset project.
What is the logic behind it?
Carbon offsetting finances the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through certified climate projects, enabling you to be responsible for and compensate for your inevitable climate impact in different parts of the world.
Projects that can be realized without financial support are not considered carbon offset projects because the financing you provide by purchasing carbon credits helps ensure the transition to a low carbon economy.
Critiques of Carbon Offset
While purchasing carbon credits is a way of offsetting emissions, there are opposing views. A company can be an emissions-intensive producer and offset its carbon emissions at the same time. Here, it is a fact that we cannot fight against the climate with the carbon offset method alone. Regardless of whether they do carbon offsetting or not, all organizations, individuals, and responsible persons must first put forth all efforts for carbon reduction.
Even though we use carbon emission reduction and elimination methods as far as we know from current technology and information, there are still emissions that cannot be avoided. It is not possible to replace many of the resources we actively use with renewable and low-emission sources all at once.
As a result, carbon offset does not allow you to eliminate emissions. For this reason, when you buy a carbon offset project, it does not give you the right to turn to options that cause higher carbon emissions. With a holistic approach, carbon offset is a way of balancing the atmosphere for emissions that we cannot prevent after we do our best to reduce the emissions we cause.