Energy usage in buildings is recognised as one of the biggest contributors to climate change, and a number of landlords have entered contracts to buy 'carbon credits' which allow them to counterbalance the carbon emissions from their buildings by investing in forestry or renewable energy and energy conservation projects.

However, Land Securities said that simply paying to "neutralise" a company's carbon footprint is not enough to enable the UK to achieve the reductions necessary to stabilise the effects of climate change.

Rather, the company advocates a four-pronged approach to energy management, which also involves reducing overall energy consumption; delivering energy in a more efficient way and using renewable energy sources before resorting to offsetting.

By contrast, rival REIT British Land announced its own environmental strategy last month, with the aim of becoming carbon-neutral within a year. To achieve this, it is putting much greater emphasis on carbon offsetting, at least in the first instance.

CEO Stephen Hester said that offsetting would allow his company to put a price on its carbon emissions. "Over time the pricing discipline that offsetting brings will allow us to translate the disciplines of the marketplace through to the disciplines of making the built environment into an attractive, friendly place," he said.

Even Land Securities is not ruling out the use of offsetting totally: it accepts that there remains a carbon footprint on its buildings which it has committed to offset, where the buildings are within its control. An example of this is the common parts of the shopping centre portfolio, which accounted for 13,714 tonnes of CO2 in 2005/6.

Land Securities Environmental Director Dave Farebrother explained: "We will only offset after exploring our options and where doing so provides a further incentive to tackle emissions."

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