tripwires

Introduction

If we were to offer one piece of advice to people entering the world of environmental reporting and carbon offsetting for the first time, it would be ‘be careful where you step’.

Unfortunately this sector is rammed full of cowboys.

We’ve thought long and hard about whether we should include this inherently negative section, but ultimately we decided it’s just too good to leave out.

On this page we draw your attention to some of the most commonly encountered tripwires, in order that you might recognise them and get through the minefield intact.

Of course, we are more than happy to chat with you about any aspect of our operations or offer advice, especially where information from other companies conflicts with our own.

1 of 4

Environmental reporting

Since 2019 all large companies have been legally required to present an Environmental Strategy Plan, to report on their annual emissions and to purchase certified carbon offsets.

Smaller companies are increasingly also doing this, but on a voluntarily basis, in advance of upcoming legal requirements.

The main problem in this area is that the legislation is vague, meaning that the resulting reports are not standardised and are often shockingly inadequate. Inaccurate calculations and deliberate omissions usually lead to either a gross understatement of emissions or to a gross overcharging for carbon credits.

We continue to work very hard on our systems, to ensure that we calculate all emissions as accurately as possible and report in a format that is as comprehensive, clear and repeatable as possible.

Before you engage a company, we suggest that you ask to see an example of a report that they have generated for an organisation similar to your own. You can then compare them with the reports that we produce and draw your own conclusions.

2 of 4

Calculating emissions

It has to be said that calculating emissions is, at best, an approximate process. But there’s approximate and there’s downright incorrect.

Most reports come from the bottom up, attaching values to a relatively small number of emissions categories to produce an inadequate and incomplete assessment.

We work the other way, top down, starting with your total annual expenditure and allocating it all to the various emissions categories. This way we ensure that we capture the full picture. The more time we spend on it, the more accurately we can segment the spend, the more accurate the report.

You are then legally entitled to exclude certain categories of emissions from your official declaration, but you will be doing so from a position of knowledge, rather than from ignorance.

If you encounter a company which offers you a reporting system which does not take into account your whole annual spend, then you will know to disregard them.

When it comes to the accuracy of the emissions factors used for each of the segments, these are generally provided by official government sources. You might think that this would provide some reassurance, but in reality these numbers are full of holes and we are obliged to apply a host of enhancements, in order to ensure accurate reporting.

When looking into a particular area in detail, we often dig down to the core science and derive our own emissions factors from first principles.

You might like to ask other suppliers about how they derive and apply their emissions factors.

3 of 4

Carbon certification

The definitions around carbon certification are also shockingly vague.

Even with a relatively well-defined term like ‘carbon neutral’, it is desperately unclear exactly which emissions should be included in the calculations. There is far too much room for abuse, meaning that many certifications aren’t worth the paper they are written on.

Our carbon certification levels are very clearly defined and demand a much more rigorous approach than most. This does make them potentially harder to achieve, but it’s worth the extra effort.

The complete integrity of the certifications that we grant is extremely important to us. An endorsement from squestr needs to be as good as it gets.

4 of 4

Carbon credits

This is the area where incompetence most commonly descends into fraud.

In order to achieve carbon certification, you will most likely need to purchase carbon credits to offset your emissions.

The company providing the carbon credits can find itself inherently incentivised to overstate your emissions (so they can sell you more credits) and/or over-estimate the effectiveness of their carbon sequestration project (so that they can win your business).

There are so many cons being operated in this area, that we’ve decided to go into it in some detail.

1 : Carbon vs carbon dioxide

When calculating your carbon footprint, we need to determine the amount of carbon dioxide that you emit and translate that into the amount of carbon that our trees (or other projects) need to sequester.

Basic chemistry tells us that carbon has an atomic weight of 12, whilst carbon dioxide has an atomic weight of 44 (12+16+16). A kilogram of carbon dioxide therefore contains (12/44) = 0.27 kg of carbon.

During our research we have discovered multiple instances where companies mix up these units, always in the direction which leads to their customer’s emissions being overestimated by a factor of almost four times.

We will leave you to decide whether this is incompetence, negligence or deliberate deceit.

2 : Flights

In recent years we’ve all been brow-beaten into believing that air travel is extremely bad for the environment. Whilst there is no doubt that planes do emit a lot of carbon dioxide, the issue has been widely over-stated.

Virtually every source makes the same major errors.

On a long haul flight, up to 50% of the payload for a large airliner is typically comprised of freight. The remainder is made up by the passengers, their luggage, their seats and all the other elements that support their travel. Yet virtually all sources allocate all of the the carbon emissions to the passengers and none to the freight.

Furthermore, almost all sources calculate that a long haul flight usually operates at around 50-60% capacity, yet whenever we fly long haul, the flights are usually full, meaning that there’s almost twice as many people to share the carbon emissions. You can bet the cargo is running full too.

Taking these and other factors into account, we reckon that most sources overstate carbon emissions by 4-8 times, which we find pretty shocking.

To provide some perspective, an average person in a developed country is responsible for carbon emissions of around 14,000 kgCO2e per year. A 4000 km (2500 mile) round trip in an economy seat in a full plane adds just 280 kgCO2e, which can easily be offset by planting just 3-5 trees, at a cost of GBP 10-20.

Many offsetting companies are using their spurious calculation methods to grossly overstate the quantity of carbon credits that their clients need to purchase.

3 : Carbon credit projects

When it comes to actually creating carbon credits by planting trees or other mechanisms, there is even more scope for deviousness. We cover this in detail on our page entitled Planting Trees.

Next section

Business

The place to start if you are are thinking about introducing environmental reporting and carbon certification to your company or organisation.

Please click here if you are an individual rather than a business.