Government Carbon Offsetting Facility (GCOF II)
How Government Procurement Service Helps With Carbon Offsetting
January 2010 saw the launch of the second phase of the Government Carbon Offsetting Facility (GCOF II) which will enable public sector organisations to offset their CO2 emissions resulting from air travel and other essential activities.
Offsetting has a legitimate role to play in managing emissions. There are some journeys that simply cannot be avoided and offsetting mitigates the impact of CO2 emissions from those journeys by providing a mechanism through which emission reductions can be achieved elsewhere in the world.
The original Government Carbon Offsetting Fund (GCOF) was launched by Defra in November 2007 as part of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy and was designed to meet a commitment to offset ministerial and official air travel emissions in central government.
Between April 2006 and March 2009 a total of 305,000 Certified Emissions Reduction credits (CERs) were purchased by departments from a range of small scale renewable energy projects in India, China and Brazil, each with a range of impressive sustainable development benefits.
DECC is now encouraging all public sector organisations, including central and local government, devolved administrations, executive agencies and NDPB's wishing to offset their CO2 emissions to use GCOF II as their mechanism for purchasing CER credits.
The policy for GCOF is owned by DECC and its operation by Government Procurement Service, governed by a Memorandum of Understanding between our two organisations.
Emissions offset through GCOF must be for a particular activity, such as travel or the use of purchased electricity, or produced over a defined period of time, and calculated using the Defra emissions conversion factors.
Government Procurement Service worked closely with DECC to procure the second phase of GCOF -with the F now standing for Facility. It is a multiple supplier framework agreement for which 10 suppliers have been awarded contracts.
GCOF II will facilitate the purchase of Gold Standard or equivalent CER credits under the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
DECC has limited the capacity of GCOF II to offset three million tonnes of carbon dioxide between April 2009 and March 2012 – approximately one million tonnes annually. This limit has been set to encourage organisations to reduce emissions in preference to simply offsetting emissions.
However, the scope is being expanded to facilitate the meeting of other potential offsetting needs for Government, as well as making the contract more widely available to UK public sector bodies outside of central Government (devolved administrations, local authorities etc) through a single framework contract with multiple suppliers with Supply Tender Requests made under the terms of the contract.
As with the original GCOF contract, the Government is seeking additional sustainable development benefits to be associated with the projects producing the CERs.
The Government has therefore decided to seek ‘CDM Gold Standard or equivalent’ CER credits for GCOF II.
Government Carbon Offsetting Facility (RM727)
Effective From:18-01-2010. Expiry Date: 17-01-2013
For more details, users guides, useful links and publications, please click the left hand menu tabs.
Date of Next e-Auction
We are pleased to inform you the next e-Auction will take place 22 November 2011.
If you wish to participate you will need to complete the Ready Reckoner also please complete the online customer confirmation form and send to the GCOF email address gcof@buyingsolutions.gsi.gov.uk This information needs to be completed and returned by 12 October 2011.
If you have any queries please contact Patricia Byrne through the Government Procurement Service service Desk on 0345 410 2222.
Government Procurement Service reserves the right to postpone or cancel any proposed e-Auction and will notify all customers who have committed to partake in such activities with sufficient notice prior to the event.
Please note: Departments purchasing through GCOF will need to pay at the VAT rate as of 1st November 2010. The departments will need to account to HMRC by including it in their quarterly VAT returns. All of the departments should have a VAT liaison officer who can help them with this. This applies to all UK organisations regardless of whether the supplier is based in the UK or not.
This is explained in the HMRC briefing note* (External link)