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Measuring Carbon Emissions and
Emission Reductions

The key to measuring any Carbon Emission Reductions, is demonstrating how the project activity generates real emissions savings that are truly above and beyond business as usual.

CarbonAided Ltd have quantified the expedition's Carbon savings, initially based on estimates of factors like fuel consumption, mileage and the effectiveness of our offsetting project in Mali, e.t.c . During the expedition we'll accurately log all this information and at the end, they will be able to use their formula to give us a final figure of the Carbon savings that resulted from the expedition.

The first step in measuring our Greenhouse Gas emission reductions is to quantify how much CO2 would have been emitted if this was an ordinary expedition, using regular fossil fuel. This is known as “the baseline”.

CarbonAided have simply taken the diesel fuel that would have been consumed by the truck and cross country vehicles travelling to Mali and calculated the baseline emissions to be about 5tonnes of CO2

Next they looked at the emissions expected from the Carbon-cutting biofuel , specifically the emissions resulting from making the biofuel and delivering the fuel to the vehicles. The emissions associated with the production, delivery and burning of the biofuel in the vehicles will produce around 500kg of CO2. That's only a tenth of the emissions from traditional diesel.

The difference between the baseline and the estimated emissions represents the “mission reduction” of 4.5 tonnes and this could be turned into Carbon Credits.

However, the drive will still produce 500kg of CO2, so without the offsetting project it cannot be considered carbon negative, or even neutral.

CarbonAided then looked at the additional ongoing activities of the expedition, involving the biodiesel production equipment taken to MFC in Mali , and the emission reductions resulting from these. A rough calculation showed that over the following year, the saving of greenhouse gas emissions in Mali would create a carbon saving of approximately 7tonnes.

And on top of that, the recycled vehicles taken to Mali may save up to 8 tonnes of CO2 from the avoided manufacture of new vehicles.

So according to this initial estimate, in it's first year, the expedition will save around 15 tonnes of CO2 emissions and emit half a tonne, and it will continue to make further savings over the following years.

14.5 tonnes of CO2 emission is what you might expect from…

Of course, this analysis is based on estimates of the truck's fuel consumption and the effectiveness of the offsetting project in Mali .

The final step is verification of the actual emissions, so during the expedition and we have put in place a series of checks on the fuel used and the delivery of equipment to Mali . We will also put in place a method to monitor the on-going activity in Mali to confirm those annual emission reductions. That data will be used to confirm the emissions are real and to formulate their actual size of the expeditions saving, in Carbon terms.

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The Expedition set off from the UK on the 26th of November and arrived in Timbuktu on the 26th of December 2007.

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