The Qantas Group has finalized new supplier arrangements for its voluntary carbon offset program under an agreement with Climate Friendly.
Customer purchases to the Qantas and Jetstar offset programs will now support a range of projects to reduce carbon emissions. The carbon offsets created through these projects are sourced by Climate Friendly and meet the requirements of the Australian Government's new National Carbon Offset Standard. The introduction of NCOS prompted Qantas to go to market for new providers.
"We launched our carbon offset program in 2007 to give our customers the choice of flying carbon neutral by offsetting their share of flight emissions," Qantas Chief Risk Officer, Rob Kella, said. "Since then all contributions received have gone towards purchasing carbon offsets generated by accredited abatement projects. The program has offset over 770,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions to date.
The offsets will come from a number of projects in developing countries, including a wind-farm development in China, 'run of river' hydro-power projects in Taiwan and Indonesia and a fuel switching project in Brazil.