Carbon Offsetting

Carbon offsetting is an action by a company or individual to compensate for their emissions by financing a reduction in emissions elsewhere. In air cargo operations, the offset can be equivalent in part or in whole to the associated emissions, by financing compensated – or offset – by preventing or reducing a similar amount of emission elsewhere. This compensation can be performed by the airline itself or by its passengers. A clear distinction exists between airline mandatory offsetting requirements under ICAO's Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) and voluntary passenger or cargo customer action. Airlines cannot make any claims for offsets that passengers have voluntarily invested in and cannot use such offsets for frameworks like CORSIA.

Qatar Airways Cargo became the first cargo carrier to join IATA's carbon offsetting CO2NNECT platform, using IATA standards for calculating CO2 emissions per freight kg, with freight forwarder Kuehne+Nagel as the launch customer for the scheme. Over 50 airlines have introduced an offset program either integrated into their web-sales engines or to a third-party offset provider.

• carbon offset
• carbon credits
• emissions offset
• voluntary carbon offset

What is the difference between CORSIA and voluntary carbon offsetting programs in air cargo?

CORSIA is a global offsetting scheme whereby airlines and other aircraft operators offset any growth in CO2 emissions above 85% of 2019 levels and only applies to international flights. Under CORSIA, all airline operators with annual emissions greater than 10,000 tonnes of CO2 are required to report their emissions from international flights on an annual basis since 1 January 2019. Voluntary carbon offsetting is separate from CORSIA's mandatory requirements, and airlines cannot make any claims for offsets that passengers have voluntarily invested in.

How are carbon offset calculations performed for air cargo shipments?

IATA CO2 Connect for Cargo calculates per-shipment CO2 emissions using primary data from airlines and is based on industry-approved recommended practices, applying actual airline fuel consumption data, airline-specific cargo load factors, and airline-specific passenger numbers to provide a highly accurate value of per-shipment CO2 emissions by airline and aircraft type. The IATA/ICAO Recommended Practice 1678 provides accurate calculation and transparency to understand the air cargo carbon footprint at the shipment level, adopted in 2014 and updated in 2022. The IATA CO2 Connect calculator uses an emissions factor of 3.16 for jet kerosene.