We’ve offset 19 cars worth of carbon

Our approach to CO₂

At The Green Insurer, we adopt a three-point approach to CO₂ as part of our quest to help reduce the impact of carbon on our environment:

1. 1. Avoid carbon emissions - The easiest way to achieve this is to drive less. Our rewards programme rewards our customers for driving fewer miles than anticipated when they took out their policy. So why not benefit by leaving your car at home for short journeys, taking the train or bus or walking to a local shop?
2. 2. Reduce carbon emissions - Our rewards programme incentivises customer to drive in a green, fuel efficient way for example, by highlighting in our App when a customer has taken a corner too fast we can inform them of how they could reduce their emissions and the wear and tear on their vehicle simply by driving round corners more carefully.
3. 3. Offsetting carbon emissions - Driving is a fundamental part of life for many people, therefore, carbon emissions are inevitable. Our approach is to offset the vehicle emissions of our customers by investing in carbon offset projects via our partners at Earthly.

How carbon emissions are offset

The Green Insurer have partnered with Earthly to balance the offsetting carbon emissions our customers make when driving.

This ensures that all our carbon offset projects are verified independently using Earthly assessments in addition to others carbon standards. The most commonly used standard globally is the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and all of our projects are VCS accredited.

Although none of the standards are perfect, our approach of using multiple sources of validation methods helps to ensure that projects we support deliver the outcomes they claim.

Below you can see the Carbon offset projects we’ve invested in. Earthly conduct comprehensive assessment of all projects by analysing 106 measures across the three areas: carbon, biodiversity (assessing the diversity of things that grow and live on Earth) and people.

In addition to Earthly’s own assessment, projects are also validated using various standards including The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standards (CCB) and Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SDVista).

These are the projects we support:

We will continue to monitor the project accreditation process and if alternative, better methods emerge, we will use these.

We will continue, wherever possible, to use independent validation of our projects.

How carbon offsets are calculated

To add a little context, the VW emissions scandal in 2015 led to improvements and more rigour over how carbon emissions are submitted to the DVLA, with the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) being fully adopted for CO₂ emissions for new cars since 2018.

We use the DVLA’s carbon emissions data along with our Green Driving Score algorithm to achieve the most accurate carbon emissions data that we can.

The amount of carbon offset is based on the carbon emissions data, the actual miles driven and adjusted for how fuel efficiently you drive. You can view your Green Driving Score in The Green Insurer app along with a summary of how much carbon you've offset.

If the DVLA data is not available, we may use the data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) or Thatcham data for that car.