The Business Case for Carbon Offsetting

The market for voluntarily offsetting carbon emissions doubled between 2007 and 2008 to reach $700m. With forecasts suggesting that the market could double again to 2012 this new sector is now attracting the attention of more serious investors and traders, as well as more companies looking to offset their emissions. But despite all the excitement around these projections there has been no systematic analysis of where the demand in this new market will actually come from, if indeed at all. Nobody has stopped to ask the simple questions “why do organizations voluntarily offset their emissions?” “how much value do they get out of it”, and “when does carbon setting work and when doesn’t it work?“