It is virtually impossible to eliminate all of your greenhouse gas emissions. After doing your best to reduce your emissions from your use of energy, transportation, and other daily activities, most likely you will still be generating some emissions.

To mitigate the harms caused by greenhouse gas emissions, a growing number of businesses, governments, and even individuals are seeking out ways to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. After reducing their emissions as much as possible, they go one final step further and pay for emission reductions that are achieved elsewhere. In essence, this reduces their carbon footprint to zero — producing no overall negative impact on the environment.

The concept of offsetting one’s emissions by paying for the actions of another is based on the growing market of emissions trading. Unlike the highly-regulated emissions market, carbon offsets involve voluntary actions by individuals, companies, or governments that are arranged by commercial or not-for-profit carbon-offset providers.

Currently, a number of different strategies are used to offset carbon emissions, including using renewable energy, capturing methane, and investing in energy conservation and efficiency. In recent years, as carbon offsets have received more attention and undergone more scrutiny, a market in the purchase and retirement of carbon trading credits has grown, as has more standardization and certification of carbon offsets.