Where does your money go?
Where does your money go?
Qantas commits to pass on all customer contributions and does not profit from our carbon offset program.
With our carbon offset program, you can be confident that your money will be used to purchase carbon offsets of high integrity that have been approved by the Australian Government.
The veracity of our program is audited by independent verifiers approved by the Australian Government Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.
Our National Carbon Offset Standard -Carbon Neutral Program Public Disclosure Summary presents a publicly accessible summary of independently audited facts about our program.
To improve transparency, the carbon offsets used for our program are cancelled onto publically available registries:
How we chose our carbon offsets
Each of our carbon offsets projects has been screened through a multi-stage selection process using standards that have been independently developed with the aim to ensure that Qantas and you can be confident in their integrity.
All Carbon Offsets Projects
There are many types of carbon offset projects globally that seek to either reduce and avoid emissions, or, to capture carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon offset markets are still emerging and evolving so in some cases the true quality of the carbon offsets may be perceived as variable. A screening process is therefore important.
Independent Carbon Offset Project Accreditation
By only choosing projects that have received accreditation from an independent third party verifier as a result of a comprehensive audit, provides a filter as to the integrity of the offsets. This accreditation usually seeks to confirm amongst other criteria that the project is additional to business as usual and the emissions reduction is permanent. The most reputable accreditation schemes are the Gold Standard, Clean Development Mechanism, VER+, Voluntary Carbon Standard and Greenhouse Friendly. Leading schemes are usually backed by reputable global environmental sustainability not-for-profit organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund, The Climate Group or the United Nations.
Australian Government NCOS Compliant
The Australian Government developed the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) to ensure that consumers have confidence in the voluntary carbon offset market and the integrity of the carbon neutral products they wish to purchase. Only the highest quality types of carbon offsets are approved by the NCOS.
Carbon Offset Supplier Standards
Similar to any retail organisation, reputable carbon suppliers have their own internal checks to ensure only quality product is purchased from project originators for resale. Leading carbon suppliers are often also members of the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA), a not-for-profit alliance advocating rigorous voluntary carbon offset industry standards.
Our Carbon Offset Program Commitment
Our commitment is to direct your contribution towards funding carbon offset projects that are deemed to:
- Be additional to business as usual
- Permanently reduce greenhouse gas emissions
- Not be double-counted or used to by Qantas to reduce its liability under any carbon compliance regime
- Contribute to sustainable development and provide social co-benefits wherever possible
- Be independently verified against a high quality internationally recognised standard
- Have a real time impact by closely matching the timing of emissions reduction to the actual emissions you're offsetting
Also, in relation to the diagram below, we currently aim to focus your contributions towards renewable energy type carbon offset projects. This action when combined with other forms of external market support (red) for the renewable energy market, help to bring renewable energy solutions sooner towards the 'grid parity' point of real commercial viability at which time the need for artificial interventions into the energy market for environmental sustainability reasons can be lifted. When grid parity is considered to have been reached we can switch our focus to bio-sequestration (such as forestry) type projects to absorb residual emissions.
How we calculate your flight emissions
Our calculations are independently verified.
To accurately calculate the mass of emissions of a passenger flying from one point to another, we undertook a comprehensive life cycle study of our energy usage in flight (such as jet fuel) and on the ground - in our catering centres, engineering facilities, airport terminals, offices and our ground transport vehicles. Over 95% of your flight emissions arise directly from the combustion of jet fuel.
Using data over 12 months and full fuel cycle emissions factors published by the Australian Government, we added the emissions released by our aircraft on each flight sector to the related emissions from ground activities and then divided that amount by the number of passengers we carried on the sector. Using actual data in this way provides a very good estimation of the share of emissions attributable to each passenger on a flight.
This data is updated annually.
If you're flying on a sector operated by a Qantas Codeshare flight, your emissions are calculated using the average emissions per kilometre, based on an average of all flights across the Qantas network.
From 2007 to June 2010 this detailed assessment process was independently verified before being certified by the Australian Government's Greenhouse FriendlyTM initiative. From July 2010, Qantas has been certified with the Australian Government's replacement scheme, the National Carbon Offset Standard- Carbon Neutral initiative. The same full lifecycle approach is taken in both.
