Investing in renewable energy and things like cookstoves are a way to avoid emissions from occurring elsewhere.

This does not actually do anything about emissions already present, as the fact is, we already have too much CO₂ in the atmosphere.

While it is cheaper to offset using these methods, reductions in emissions should be counted as what they are, reductions. This clear distinction between reducing and removing is technical but important. In order to reach the goals of the Paris agreement, everyone needs to reduce their own emissions first, and secondly, do something about their unavoidable emissions.

An avoided emission is not the equivalent of a negative emission. To reach genuine Net Zero, companies must remove what they have put out.

To combat climate change and incentivise change, all companies need to do what is both economically feasible and motivates change.

Different companies have massively different levels of CO₂ emissions.

This is often referred to as the “emission intensity” of a company. Simply put, it can be expressed as how many tons of CO₂ is emitted for each million of revenue.

Let’s take an example. For each million in revenue, Company B emits 850 tons while Company A emits just 4.5. Now let’s imagine that both companies decided to offset, investing €25 per ton.

For Company A, this would result in just 0.01% of their revenue. Hardly a significant commitment. With the same investment per ton, Company B would spend more than 2% of their revenue which is unfeasible in a highly competitive market with tiny margins.