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Carbon offsetting has become big business in recent years with companies offering to offset emissions by investing in carbon-saving projects. The idea is that for every tonne of carbon dioxide produced, a tonne is either removed from the atmosphere – by planting trees intended to act as a carbon sink – or avoided, by replacing a polluting activity with a clean alternative, such as renewable energy.

Some offsetting schemes have been criticised on a number of counts. Although trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they must remain in situ to prevent the carbon being released again, so there would have to be strong guarantees that forests planted this year to offset emissions were not cut down a couple of years later. There are other problems with tree-planting offset schemes, too: large plantations where just one type of tree is grown are bad news for wildlife and can cause problems for people locally.

Offsetting schemes that invest in renewable energy projects can benefit communities in the developing world, and a gold standard has been established for offsetting schemes that deliver genuine benefits. This guarantees that the investment is made in a scheme that would have struggled to find funding in any other way.

However robust an individual offset scheme, Friends of the Earth points out that it is simply a way for the industrialised world to buy the right to continue polluting rather than cutting emissions at source. Offsetting allows companies and individuals to claim that they are tackling carbon emissions when they may not be doing anything to cut emissions at source. Such an approach will do little to reduce the UK’s emissions of carbon dioxide. The spread of carbon offsetting may have helped stimulate awareness of climate change, but many people now argue that it should be a last resort – and that genuine cuts to carbon emissions must come first.