Carbon offsetting Channel 4 News from Brazil
Updated on 03 December 2009
Channel 4 News has been broadcasting all week from Brazil on climate change. But many people have asked how do we justify our carbon emissions by travelling there? Julian Rush explains.
Broadcasting Channel 4 News from Brazil is a major technical and logistical exercise. And Brazil is a big country – bigger than Europe. So we were well aware from the start that there was a certain irony in flying people and equipment thousands of miles around the world to report on climate change, when doing so would mean emitting a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – to contribute to the very problem we wanted to report.
It's justified, of course, because it is overwhelmingly important that the other side of the climate story is told – and seen through the eyes of the people of a key developing country, for it brings a global perspective to a global problem.
Imperfect though it may be, we have offset the carbon emissions from our travels. All the flights both to and from Brazil and within this vast country for around a dozen people; the boats we used on the Amazon; the vans and cars we used to carry the kit around; all in all that added up to just under 100 tonnes of carbon at £13.80 per tonne, the current price of carbon in the European Emissions Trading Scheme. By doing so, we have taken an allowance of 100 tonnes of CO2 emissions out of the European market that would otherwise have been used by someone else.
The ETS has problems, we know. We've reported on them. But it's all there is at the moment. And we have chosen to offset through an organisation that deliberately maximises the environmental benefit of the money we've spent.
Sandbag, set up by former Friends of the Earth campaigner Bryony Worthington, only buys emissions credits from companies or organisations that contractually agree to spend the money they receive on measures to save energy, thus reducing CO2 emissions further.
So we have bought our 100 tonnes of CO2 credits from St Thomas's Hospital in London. Under the European ETS they have a limit on the amount of CO2 they can emit from their large boilers and heating systems. But because they have just installed a less-polluting, more efficient Combined Heat and Power plant, they have pollution permits to spare. In return, they will spend our money on installing low energy light bulbs in the wards – so further reducing their emissions by saving energy.
And what of the emissions credits we now hold? Well, we've used them for our coverage from Brazil and the system doesn't allow them to be used again, so there's no point in trading them on to someone else.
But just to make sure, we've torn them up.
