You might be wondering why we are doing this and also why we had it in the first place?! And first and foremost – what is it?
Ok, so when you calculate your carbon footprint with GoClimate and get a result of, let’s say, 12 tonnes of CO2e per year, you have – if you signed up with our old calculator – carbon offsetted 24 tonnes of CO2e/year.
Why did we apply this buffer factor in the first place?
Well – there were several reasons for this.
First we wanted to make an as big climate impact as possible. And since carbon offsetting was so cheap we found that very few people signing up minded doubling their impact. Having all of us offsetting twice as many tonnes of emissions as our lifestyle caused, did a bigger and quicker climate impact.
We also wanted the offsetting to cover all the small details that might have been left out of our calculator. Our goal was (and is still) to provide a tool that is incredibly easy to use, which by asking the right questions can give a good approximation of the carbon footprint. Instead of striving for a very precise answer, which would require asking for a lot of details that one might have to recall or look up but wouldn’t have a huge impact on the result, the calculator is formulated so that anyone can answer effortlessly and get a fairly accurate idea of their impact.
We also found the buffer factor a good way of hedging for risks in the climate projects we support.
So simply put, we used the buffer to compensate for miscalculations of your emissions, for risks in the projects we support and because carbon offsetting used to be relatively cheap.
Why we decided to remove it
The cost of high quality carbon credits has risen with more than 3x, and now more accurately reflects the damage caused by carbon emissions.
Since the launch of the calculator we have also added a few more questions to it to cover more details of your footprint.
We’re also stopping to use the term carbon neutral. We rather ask people to balance their carbon footprint out and contribute with critical climate financing.
What happens if I changed my subscription after I signed up?
Since we unfortunately have no easy way of telling whether you changed your subscription after you signed up or not, we will assume that the buffer factor has been used when you changed your subscription.
The result of us removing the factor will be that we half the amount of tonnes in your adjusted subscription. If you want to keep it, feel free to add it manually in your payment settings page.