Carbon offsetting: Why, How and Where the credits are being spent

We have decided to make it an ‘opt-in’ rather than an ‘opt-out’ scheme, as we understand that our customers may already be offsetting through their own offset schemes. It is therefore fairer and more transparent to make it an ‘opt-in’.

Yes, you can ask your ACS account manager to increase the 0.5% contribution to our carbon offsetting fund.

If you’re travelling in a plane, you’re emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. But you can now take positive action and compensate for your emissions by investing in projects designed to reduce the overall amount of CO2 being emitted in the future.

An offset can be achieved by purchasing and cancelling something called a carbon credit. Carbon credits are the result of an international effort to mitigate the growth of greenhouse gases. Climate projects sell carbon credits in order to fund their development. Each credit is equal to the emission of one tonne of carbon dioxide.

What does that actually mean?

If you book a flight with us, and wish to offset the carbon emitted as a result of your trip, we will charge you a fee. This fee has been based on the analysis of more than 8,000 charters and looking at current market rates for carbon credits. We’ll go into the methodology of our calculation later. The money we charge you for the offset is invested into buying carbon credits in a climate project. In order for a climate project to sell carbon credits, it must meet the following criteria:

Real.

All emission reductions generated must be proven to have genuinely taken place.

Measurable.

All emission reductions must be quantifiable using recognised measurement tools and techniques.

Additional.

Projects must be able to prove that their emission reductions are additional, and would not have taken place without the help of carbon finance.

Independently verified.

Emission reductions must be verified by an approved independent third party verifier with expertise in both the country and sector in which the project is taking place to provide an adequate level of assurance.

Unique.

Double counting of carbon credits is prevented through the use of registries, that track ownership and eventual cancelation for regulatory compliance.

Once these criteria are met, the project will be certified by one of the global credit standards. We only invest in projects that are certified by the United Nations www.cdm.unfccc.int and Gold Standard www.www.goldstandard.org/, two of the leading global credit standards.

Yes. Investing in projects certified by the United Nations and Gold Standard ensures that full levels of due diligence and compliance are undertaken on the projects where the credits are being issued from. This means that the investment generated by every carbon offset that is purchased by ACS is certified to be genuine and ultimately feeding directly into the environmental project.

Retirement is the final stage of the lifecycle of carbon credits, as after they are retired, they can no longer be used again, preventing them from being double counted (i.e. used twice).

By choosing to carbon offset your flight, we invest all of your money into carbon credits issued by climate projects. We do not take a commission or charge a margin. There are many different types of climate projects around the world, including renewable energy, waste management, forestry and agriculture, biofuels, energy and fuel technologies, biodiversity protection, sustainable development and ecosystem protection. When you choose to offset, you are providing the essential financial support that keeps these projects operational and are doing something positive for the environment by helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon footprinting is a fairly new concept for private aviation, so we worked in partnership with Carbon Trade eXchange (CTX) to develop a unique methodology for estimating the carbon footprint of every booking we make. In order to calculate the carbon footprint of a booking we need to know (1) the point-to-point distance of the flight and (2) the estimated fuel burn for your aircraft category. As headwinds and tailwinds can hugely impact the fuel burn of any particular trip it is impossible for anyone to accurately forecast the emissions amount in advance.

We calculate the point-to-point distance of your bookings using airport coordinates available at openflights.org. That is the easy part. We book a huge variety of different aircraft which each have different fuel requirements. We use a data set from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which includes the fuel burn rate profile for over 150 aircraft types, as defined by their IATA Aircraft Designator. The ICAO data is based upon real engine tests and is the most accurate data source for private aviation that exists to-date. Each aircraft will burn fuel at a varying rate depending on what stage of its journey it is at (take-off, landing, maximum cruising altitude). The ICAO data is divided into 500nm sectors to provide the most granular and accurate estimation of fuel burn rate at each stage of the journey. We match the aircraft that you have booked with its fuel burn profile and calculate the total fuel burned according to the length of your flight. Once we have the total fuel burn for each flight we can easily calculate the GHG emissions associated with the fuel burned. We use an emissions factor for Aviation Fuel, which is published by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

Our partner, Carbon Trade eXchange (CTX), is a venue for 1000s of environmental projects to list their credits for sale and each project has the potential to issue thousands, or millions, of tonnes of carbon credits each year.

We work with CTX to analyse the carbon credit market and to select an average price per carbon credit that will allow it to support a portfolio of high-quality projects (the range in quality is huge) that are in different locations around the world and represent investments in different types of environmental projects, from renewable energy through to community benefit schemes.

Together with Carbon Trade Xchange, an industry leader in carbon offsetting, we have estimated that .5% of the booking value would allow us to offset 98% of flights analysed, with ACS committed to topping up the fund should the monies collected not be sufficient.

At the end of each quarter we calculate the carbon emissions of all offset flights to ensure that sufficient carbon credits can be purchased based on current market prices. In the eventuality that there is a shortfall, we (ACS) make up the difference. Where there is a surplus, this is also invested into projects so that we can make sure we are offsetting more CO2 than is generated by participating flights.

Combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation have caused the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to increase by about 43% since the beginning of the age of industrialization. Currently, about half of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere and is not absorbed by vegetation and the oceans.

Not only do increasing carbon dioxide concentrations lead to increases in global surface temperature, but increasing global temperatures also cause increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide, creating a positive feedback cycle. The planet Venus experienced runaway greenhouse effect, resulting in an atmosphere which is 96% carbon dioxide.

CO2 can be absorbed in a manner of ways including by bodies of water (such as seas and oceans), by frozen water (such as polar ice caps and glaciers) and by vegetation (such as rainforests) collectively known as “carbon sinks”. The most effective way of mitigating the greenhouse effect is by either preventing the generation of CO2 or by absorbing the CO2 back into these “carbon sinks”.

The carbon offsetting program that ACS offers will contribute to a number of projects that will reduce the amount of CO2 generated in the first place (through green energy initiatives) or by enhancing “carbon sinks” such as preventing deforestation or increasing reforestation.