Carbon Trust

The Carbon Trust looks at current and future sustainability challenges and works with business and organisations to develop sustainable strategies to deliver savings.[1]

The Carbon Trust provides voluntary carbon certification services and carbon labelling schemes – it verifies organisation and product carbon footprint data and provides marks of quality to organisations to demonstrate standards have been met.

The Carbon Trust works with governments, innovators and corporates with the aim of accelerating the commercialisation of low carbon technologies, and leads projects to deliver commercial partnerships and develop low carbon technologies.[2] It is particularly active in the areas of offshore wind, marine energy, fuel cell development and industrial energy efficiency. One such project is the Offshore Wind Accelerator, which is aimed at reducing the cost of wind power through projects focused in the North Sea. The Offshore Wind Accelerator is a partnership between industry and governments.[3]

The Carbon Trust provides analysis on sustainability issues to help businesses, investors and policy makers with their roles in reducing carbon and saving energy.[4] It works with companies and governments across the world.

The Carbon Trust runs a series of environmental standards that certify measurement and reduction. Currently these cover carbon, water and waste and have been awarded to hundreds of leading companies and organisations across the world.

In June 2008 the Carbon Trust introduced the Carbon Trust Carbon Standard to address what it describes as business greenwash.[5] The Carbon Trust Carbon Standard is only awarded to companies and organisations who measure and reduce their carbon emissions year on year.[6] Examples of organisations who have held the Carbon Standard include Sky, Aldi, Eurotunnel, Bupa, Pricewaterhousecoopers, Samsung Electronics, Angus Council, Capital & Regional, O2, RWE npower, Credit Suisse, and the Scottish Government.

In February 2013 the Carbon Trust introduced the Carbon Trust Water Standard to recognise those companies reducing their water use year on year. The first four companies to receive the Water Standard were Sainsbury's, Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd, Sunlight Services Group, and Branston.[7]

In July 2013 the Carbon Trust introduced the Carbon Trust Waste Standard.[8] In November 2013 the waste standard was awarded to the first wave of organisations, which included the Football Association, Renishaw plc, Whitbread, Pricewaterhousecoopers and AkzoNobel Decorative Paints. These last three became the first in the world to gain the triple crown of reaching the carbon, water and waste standard.

In 2015 the Carbon Trust launched the Carbon Trust Supply Chain Standard to look at carbon footprints across the supply chain. It is the world's first independent certification for organisations that are measuring, managing and reducing greenhouse gas (CO2e) emissions in their supply chains.

The Carbon Trust helps companies to measure the carbon emissions associated with their products (embodied emissions) and also provides a label for these products carbon footprint. Measuring the embodied emissions of products enables reductions to be identified and achieved across the supply chain. The label demonstrates a commitment by the product owner to reduce that footprint every two years. The Carbon Reduction Label was introduced in March 2007.[9]

Examples of products that have featured the carbon footprint label are Evian water, Tetra Pak packaging, Kingsmill bread, Quorn foods, Silver Spoon sugar, Walkers crisps, a range of own brand products in Tesco supermarkets, Halifax (HBOS) bank accounts, Dyson airblades, Marshalls building products, Quaker oats, Lafarge cement, and Pompeian Olive Oil.

The standards behind carbon labelling are now formally recognised through the PAS 2050 developed by the Carbon Trust in conjunction with BSI and Defra. This methodology is now gaining international acceptance following its launch in October 2008.[10]

However, currently this standard has been revised to the PAS 2050: 2011 version, but the Carbon Trust has not received UKAS accreditation.