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oaking up CO2 directly from the air through the planting of trees.

Some people and organisations offset their entire carbon footprint while others aim to neutralise the impact of a specific activity, such as taking a flight

visits an offset website, uses the online tools to calculate the emissions of their trip, and then pays the offset company to reduce emissions elsewhere in the world by the same amount – thus making the flight "carbon neutral".

£8/$12 for each tonne of CO2 offset

carbon neutrality included as part of the price.

most of the best-known carbon offset schemes have long-since switched from tree planting to clean-energy projects – anything from distributing efficient cooking stoves through to capturing methane gas at landfill sites.

many people argue that offsetting is unhelpful – or even counterproductive – in the fight against climate change

Just as indulgences allowed the rich to feel better about sinful behaviour without actually changing their ways, carbon offsets allow us to "buy complacency, political apathy and self-satisfaction"

"Our guilty consciences appeased, we continue to fill up our SUVs and fly round the world without the least concern about our impact on the planet … it's like pushing the food around on your plate to create the impression that you have eaten it."

"a positive approach to offsetting could have public resonance well beyond the CO2 offset, and would help to build awareness of the need for other measures."

This boils down not just to the effectiveness of the project at soaking up CO2 or avoiding future emissions. Effectiveness is important but not enough. You also need to be sure that the carbon savings are additional to any savings which might have happened anyway.

The carbon savings would only be classified as additional if the project managers could demonstrate that, for the period in which the carbon savings of the new lightbulbs were being counted, the recipients wouldn't have acquired low-energy bulbs by some other means.

The problem is that it's almost impossible to prove additionality with absolute certainly, as no one can be sure what will happen in the future,

If that happened, the bulbs distributed by the offset company would cease to be additional, since the energy savings would have happened even if the offset project had never happened.

To try and answer these questions, the voluntary offset market has developed various standards, which are a bit like the certification systems used for fairly traded or organic food

Voluntary Gold Standard (VGS) and the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS).

One VGS-certified biomass power plant refused to allow her around, though staff there reported a number of concerns such as trees being chopped down and sold to the plant, which was designed to run on agricultural wastes.

f we're to tackle climate change, they argue, the projects being rolled out by offset companies should be happening anyway, funded by governments around the world, while companies and individuals reduce their carbon footprints directly.

Only in this way – by doing everything possible to make reductions everywhere, rather than polluting in one place and offsetting in another – does the world have a good chance of avoiding runaway climate change, such critics claim.

some carbon-neutrality advocates suggest offsetting carbon-intensive activities such as flights two or three or even ten times ove

The point is simply that the world is full of inexpensive ways to reduce emissions. In theory, if enough people started offsetting, or if governments started acting seriously to tackle global warming, then the price of offsets would gradually rise, as the low-hanging fruit of emissions savings – the easiest and cheapest "quick wins" – would get used up.