CO₂ compensation made easy: A beginner's guide to CO₂ offsetting

What is CO₂ compensation?

CO₂ compensation is the opportunity to offset the CO₂ emissions you cause by financially supporting projects that remove or prevent CO₂ from being released into the atmosphere.

We all produce CO₂ through our lifestyle. We can reduce our CO₂ footprint by living sustainably. However, it is difficult for us to avoid all CO₂ emissions nowadays.

You can offset CO₂ emissions that you cannot save in your daily life by supporting climate protection projects. These projects remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. You can then claim the saved amount of CO₂. This makes you CO₂ neutral.

There are different CO₂ compensation providers. Many operate in the voluntary market. At ForTomorrow, we operate in the mandatory market. This means that we use the EU emissions trading system to offset CO₂. The official climate protection tool of the European Union.

It is important that the climate protection project you support actually saves CO₂. Look closely at how your favored project wants to save CO₂.

How does CO₂ compensation work at ForTomorrow?

When you take out a climate subscription with us, we offset your CO₂ emissions through effective climate protection in Europe. We give you a certificate with all the information.

First, you choose how much CO₂ you want to offset. Our CO₂ compensation is based on our two unique approaches. With us, you offset CO₂ by:

1. Buying and retiring CO₂ rights from industry, such as coal-fired power plants. The industry can no longer use these CO₂ rights. So we force them to emit less CO₂. We thus reduce CO₂ emissions in the EU.
2. Planting mixed forests in Germany. These filter CO₂ from the air. The CO₂ you pull out of the atmosphere offsets your CO₂ footprint and accelerates the energy transition in Europe. You can choose whether you want to buy and retire emissions rights, plant trees, or do both in combination. We offer you 3 packages to offset your CO₂ emissions. You can decide for yourself which one is the right one for you.

You can choose whether you want to buy and set aside carbon credits, plant trees, or do both in combination. We offer you 3 ways to offset CO₂: the subscription, a single donation or as a gift.

We now want to give everyone the leverage to effectively offset CO₂ emissions they can’t yet avoid in their daily lives with us. That’s why we offer CO₂ offsets.

At the same time, we give our subscribers the leverage to make industry more sustainable in Europe through our unique offset approach. We offer CO₂ offsets for companies and for you as an individual.

Feel free to check out our FAQs if you have more questions, and you can also find a lot of information on our blog.

We would be happy if you would join us in promoting high-quality climate protection in Europe.

What does 1 tonne of CO₂ compensation cost at ForTomorrow?

The CO₂ compensation price per tonne is made up of the costs of tree planting and EU emission rights at ForTomorrow. The price reflects the high quality of our compensation measures.

If you want to compensate for 1 tonne of CO₂ with emission rights and trees, it currently costs 70 euros per tonne. If you only want to compensate for 1 tonne of CO₂ through trees, that would cost 25 euros. The cost for CO₂ compensation with emission rights alone is 114 euros per tonne.

If we plant trees in Germany, it costs about 10 times as much as in developing countries. However, we can offer you the security in Germany, thanks to the Federal Forest Act, that your planted forest will also be preserved in the long term.

The price of emission rights has fortunately increased. For years it was only 6 € per tonne of CO₂. This gave the economy hardly any incentives to emit less CO₂. In the meantime, a tonne of CO₂ in the emissions trading system costs over 82 € (excluding VAT). But even this is still too low for the transformation to a climate-friendly economy.

Sweden, for example, has a CO₂ price of 114 € per tonne and is probably the first industrial nation to achieve climate neutrality.

We try to keep our subscription prices constant over longer periods of time. To do this, we purchase a larger quantity of emission rights at favourable times. In the next step, we predict how the CO₂ price will develop over the year.

We communicate transparently at all times when we adjust our prices.

What does CO₂ compensation bring you?

Currently, it is extremely difficult to live CO₂ neutral. Electricity, clothing, public transport - if you use these products, you produce CO₂. This will remain the case until we can operate in a CO₂-neutral way in the future.

If you want to reduce CO₂ emissions now, CO₂ compensation can bring you a lot. You can compensate for the CO₂ emissions that you cannot yet avoid in your daily life, e.g. with ForTomorrow.

When does CO₂ compensation make sense for you?

There are a few things to consider when it comes to CO₂ offsetting. First of all, check whether an offset measure can really save as much CO₂ as promised. Also check if your offset provider uses your amount for the desired purpose.

Let’s briefly examine what these two dimensions mean.

1. How much CO₂ is really offset by the project?

It is important that an offset provider states exactly how much CO₂ they are offsetting for your money. Good CO₂ offsetting can cost a bit more. For that you get a higher security.

If you plant trees, find out where they are planted. Are the forests really planted? Are the forests protected in the long term? Where are the forests planted - can you control it yourself?

A second problem is CO₂ ‘double counting’. Put simply, many countries have their own climate targets. They count themselves when CO₂ is compensated on their territory through forests and other offsets.

If you now compensate in another country, this amount can be counted twice. Once for your personal CO₂ balance, once for the CO₂ balance of the country in question. The climate crisis then rages on. But we think we have solved it.

Here we recommend: Offset where the CO₂ emissions occur. With ForTomorrow we focus on Germany and Europe.

2. Are your funds really used for CO₂ compensation?

For offsetting we recommend: Make sure that your favorite company is a non-profit organization. Then it is ensured by law that at least two thirds of the donations go to the charitable goals.

At ForTomorrow we have set ourselves an even higher limit of 85%. We use a maximum of 15% of the donations for ForTomorrow expenses e.g. office, salaries or software. At least 85% we use to buy and set aside European emission rights. And to reforest forests in Germany.

In our Impact Report, we tell you every month exactly how we use your donations.

How does CO₂ compensation work effectively?

In short: A CO₂ compensation measure makes sense if it works. Pay attention also to an ‘additionality’. That means: Without the mechanism of CO₂ compensation, the climate protection project would not exist.

It must be an additional climate protection measure. An existing forest does not meet this criterion. Its CO₂ reduction capacity is probably already included in the country’s CO₂ balance. That is why we are always reforesting in Germany. We also buy up emission rights and set them aside. This is how we prevent CO₂ from being emitted in the EU.