Fact Sheet: Carbon Offsets

• Carbon offsets give passengers the opportunity to compensate for their emissions by paying someone to make an equivalent greenhouse gas saving
• Passengers offset their share of a flight’s emissions by investing in carbon reduction projects that generate carbon credits
• Carbon offsetting is entirely voluntary for passengers
• Over 30 airlines run offset programs with different methodologies for calculating emissions and different criteria for offset projects
• Pick up rates (where reported) tend to be low
• This has created the need for a high quality, credible and transparent offset program for airlines

IATA offset program

• IATA Board mandate
  • Create an industry-wide carbon offset program
  • Guidelines on designing and implementing carbon offset programs
  • Pilot the offset program with 14 airlines and 1 global distribution system (GDS) by end of 2009.
• IATA’s Carbon Offset Program offers:
  • Greater clarity to passengers on where their money is going
  • Standard methodologies, best practice
  • Single customer purchase transactions
  • Offset tracking
  • Investing in credible emission reduction projects
  • Independent validation of the program

Managing the IATA carbon offsets program

• CO2 emission calculator is based on the ICAO methodology
• IATA identifies and quality controls the CO2 projects including
• • Arranging carbon credit purchase
  • Project selection process
  • Provision of project information for marketing purposes
  • Management and provision of CO2 offset tracking

Current status

• Offset Guidelines (pdf) have been produced
• Eight IATA airlines have signed up to the program and TAP was the launch airline on 5 June 2009
• The IATA program is accredited under the UK Government’s offset quality assurance scheme including endorsement of the IATA carbon calculator tool

Updated November 2009