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Air travel is one of the worst things an individual can do for the climate. For many, though, swearing off flying isn’t a viable option. That’s where carbon offsets can come in.

Chances are if you’ve booked a flight recently, you’ve come across the term “carbon offset”. Carbon offsets come up most often when talking about travel because of the huge carbon footprint of the aviation industry. Over the past few years, carbon offsetting has become increasingly popular, but it has also become increasingly controversial. A lot of people aren’t entirely sure what they do and most aren’t very confident in their effectiveness to combat our planets climate crisis.

Today I want to unpack exactly how carbon offsetting works, how offsets contribute to emissions reductions, and how you can make an informed decision about purchasing offsets. Plus, I also filmed a video showing you exactly how I’m offsetting the travel for my upcoming trip to Florida. 

What is carbon offsetting and how does it work?

The idea of carbon offsets, also called “carbon credits,” came from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and places a monetary value on the cost of polluting the air. There are now more than 230 companies globally that provide carbon offset services, either as project developers, traders, brokers, wholesalers, retailers, consultants – or sometimes all of the above. 

A carbon offset is essentially an investment in a climate change mitigation project, that “compensates” for pollution. When we fly, we’re emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, so the idea behind an offset is that we invest in a project that’s working to keep CO2 in the ground and out of the atmosphere, to cancel out the emissions that our flight is producing.

We most often hear about carbon offsets when booking flights because the aviation industry makes up for 2% of global emissions and for many people who have to travel for work (like me!), it is an unavoidable source of pollution. As a result, many airlines now provide customers the option to purchase offsets when booking a flight.

As an “emitter”, you purchase carbon offsets to “cancel out” your carbon footprint from your flight, drive, or any other activity that emits greenhouse gasses. These offsets then go towards projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions including reforestation projects, renewable energy projects, and energy efficiency projects. 

  • Energy efficiency: water-saving plumbing, LED lights, upgrading appliances, etc.
  • Renewable energies: wind, solar, hydro, etc. (the most popular choice)
  • Intermediate technology: clean energy stoves, bike-powered pumps, etc.
  • Reforestation: planting trees that pull CO2 from the air as they grow (most controversial due to the slow growth and difficulty of measuring oxygen output)

Do carbon offsets actually cut emissions? 

In short, no. Carbon offsets don’t remove the carbon that’s already been emitted into the atmosphere. Once you’ve boarded your flight, you’ve already produced those emissions and there’s no taking them back. 

What offsets do is cancel out what’s already been emitted. The projects that carbon offsets fund may contribute to future emissions reductions, but they don’t reduce emissions today. So, essentially carbon offsets just keep things the same – as if you’d never taken that flight at all. 

Ultimately, the question of whether or not offsets actually contribute to emissions reductions comes down to the individual. If you offset to rid yourself of guilt and to make yourself feel better about high-carbon activities such as flying, then you’re not contributing much to emissions reductions. If you offset as part of existing efforts to minimize your footprint, then you’re actively reducing emissions and making a difference – especially if the offset projects offer extra benefits such as poverty reduction in the developing world.

Ideally, you should be reducing your emissions wherever you can, and offsetting your emissions wherever you can’t. Offsets shouldn’t be used in place of minimizing your own footprint and those who treat is as such are the reason why offsets have become such a bone of contention.

Carbon offsetting is a smokescreen used to avoid real measures to tackle climate change. We urgently need to cut our emissions, but offsetting schemes encourage individuals, businesses and governments to avoid action and carry on polluting.

Tony Juniper, British environmentalist

In essence, the idea of paying to pollute won’t encourage rapid change, which is why we need additional action. However, I am not oblivious to the fact that it’s nearly impossible for you, myself, or anyone else to entirely reduce our emissions, so offsetting is the only way to ensure that actions like flying don’t continue to contribute to climate change.

How to calculate your carbon footprint

Most airline checkouts now will pre-calculate the carbon footprint of your flight, tell you the cost of offsetting those emissions, and offer you the option to purchase offsets to cancel out your footprint. There are also carbon calculators that you can use online to calculate the carbon footprint of your activities yourself. I recommend either TerraPass or Carbon Zero

The accuracy of these calculations is often brought into question by a lot of skeptics and to be honest, there is a lot of guesswork that goes into these calculators. This is largely because calculated emissions “reductions” need to be compared to what would’ve been if the offsetting project hadn’t happened, which is impossible to know for sure.

Of the thousands of carbon footprint calculators available online, none of them are going to be 100% accurate. But carbon calculators don’t exist to be accurate, they exist to give consumers an idea of the global resources that their daily activities produce and how they can reduce their carbon footprint.

A positive approach to offsetting could have public resonance well beyond the CO2 offset, and would help to build awareness of the need for other measures.

Britain’s National Consumer Council and Sustainable Development Commission

How to make the right carbon offset choice

Knowing now all of the uncertainties and potential issues associated with carbon offsets, how do you decipher which offsets are credible and effective from the ones that aren’t? And how do you ensure that your hard earned money is actually being put towards these projects?

Admittedly, it takes a bit of research and digging on your part to ensure the integrity of the offsets that you’re buying. You want to make sure that the offsets you’re buying come from a reputable source, are verified by a well-recognized organization, and are going towards projects that meet the four criteria below:

  • Quantifiable – the exchange of emissions and offsets must actually be measurable
  • Additionality – the project and subsequent emission reductions wouldn’t have happened without the investment from carbon offsets
  • Not subject to leakages – when emission reduction in one region creates an unintended increase in emissions somewhere else  (i.e. investing in a reforestation project in one area can move the logging industry to a different forest)
  • Permanency – is the organization ensuring the longevity of the project? (i.e. how are they ensuring that planted trees will not die or be cut down?)

You also want to think about the timeliness of the project’s impact. Many projects don’t make an immediate impact, such as tree planting: young trees are too small to take any meaningful amounts of carbon out of the air and take decades to reach maturity, so the benefits of these projects won’t kick in for years after you’ve purchased your offsets. Tree planting also doesn’t do anything to address our dependence on fossil fuels, which is the main reason myself and others have a concern with them. Many carbon offset certifying organizations won’t even certify reforestation projects for this reason.

Overall, the carbon offsetting projects that meet these criteria help reduce emissions, increase investment in green technologies, and raise awareness of the impact of climate change with the general population.

If all over that seems overwhelming or time-consuming, I recommend checking out Jet-Set Offset. They’re a fundraising tool for nonprofit environmental organizations working to combat climate change. You can easily sign up on their website to donate 1 cent for every mile of your trip to a vetted environmental organization.

Another easy shortcut to ensuring that the carbon offset program you’re buying into meets all of the criteria described above, is to make sure that it’s certified by Gold Standard. Gold Standard is widely considered to be the highest standard in the world for carbon offsets.

WWF also has a comparison guide of the most common offset standards.

Final Takeaways

Carbon offsets are not perfect and they’re not even the best solution to addressing the climate crisis, but for unavoidable flights and other activities without a low-carbon alternative, they are an option. They’re a tool in our climate action toolbox, but they’re not our only tool. As you saw in my video, you can instead donate to local environmental organizations, or better yet, donate your time and help out as a volunteer to help offset those emissions that you can’t eliminate.

It’s also important to remember that even if you do purchase offsets, you still need to be taking steps to reduce your carbon footprint. Offsets do not address the core problems that lead to climate change and offsetting does not replace efforts to reduce your emissions. You should still be working to reduce your emissions in any way that you can like taking public transit, eating less meat, and minimizing your overall consumption. When it comes to travelling specifically, you can still try to reduce your emissions by booking non-stop flights, packing lighter, opt to take a train if you can, and take fewer and longer holidays. 

And remember, if we all stopped traveling, things wouldn’t be better. The travel industry is responsible for 1 in 10 jobs around the world. Travel is a critical part of the economy, especially in developing countries. And travel provides us with unique cultural and educational connections that are invaluable to us and help us develop empathy, understanding, and tolerance, which is more important now than ever.

When it comes to reducing environmental impact, taking action is better than taking no action at all.



Originally, I had planned to include exactly how I offset my road trip to Florida in my YouTube video. However, I ran into some technical difficulties and the screen capture footage ended up not cooperating. So instead, I’ve listed step-by-step below, exactly how I offset my road trip to Florida. I’m sorry that the video didn’t pan out, but if you have any questions about offsetting, feel free to reach out on social media and I’ll be more than happy to chat!


How I Offset my Road Trip to Florida:

  • I first mapped out my route using Google Maps to determine how many kilometers it would be roundtrip from Guelph to Kissimmee, FL. This ended up being approximately 4,200 km.
  • I then used the Carbonzero carbon footprint calculator to calculate the amount of emissions that this trip would produce. I input the details of the car I was driving, the total kilometers, and whether it was mostly city or highway driving.
  • Carbonzero then produced my carbon footprint, which ended up being 1.05 tonnes.
  • Carbonzero is also a retailer of carbon offsets, so I was able to purchase my carbon offsets directly from them. They have six different offsetting projects that you can choose to contribute to, ranging from reforestation to renewable energy projects. In the past, I have purchased my offsets directly through this method and put them towards the Patriotes School Board Energy Conservation Project.
  • However, after watching Levi Hildebrand’s video on carbon offsets, I decided to donate the money that I would’ve used to purchase those offsets, to a local organization in my community that’s working on climate action projects. As a result, I ended up donating $35 to Transition Guelph to support the incredible work that they’re doing in my hometown.