Air Charter Service has rolled out a revamped carbon offsetting programme for customers. Chief executive Justin Bowman comments: “We appreciate that aviation is up there with the automotive and power generation as one of the industries which is producing carbon emissions. Unfortunately, unlike those industries, ours is some way from having the technology to stop the reliance on burning fuel. We believe that funding reductions in carbon emissions in industries that have the technology to do so, but not the funds, is a short term solution while we all work towards the longer term goal of electric flight. This is a goal ACS first invested in as far back as 2014, by helping to fund an electric flight programme.

“To set up the carbon offsetting programme we analysed aircraft fuel burn rates and route distances for 8,000 of our passenger charters over the past two years, compared to the selling price of each charter, and we concluded that 0.5 per cent of the charter price is more than enough to offset every customer's flight. This money will then go into our offset fund, from which we will purchase carbon credits every quarter.

“Should the monies collected not be sufficient to buy the correct amount of carbon credits to fully offset a charter, ACS will make up the shortfall. We will only invest these credits in climate projects accredited by the United Nations and Gold Standard, the highest forms of accreditation. We will not be making any profit from any of the carbon offset money; every penny will go towards the projects.

“Perhaps our biggest challenge in setting this up was the lack of data and the impossibilities of predicting how much carbon each flight will produce, as there are so many variables; weather, air traffic and even the amount of luggage. Unlike some other providers we are not prepared to make misleading claims about double-offsetting, but are confident that our calculations will offset more emissions than have been produced by our charters.

“We started the scheme on 1 February for all our private jet flights, and on 1 March it will be available for commercial airliner charters. It is initially available when booking through our offices across Europe, North America, Africa and Australia.”