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Mr. Electricity is your guide to saving energy in your home.
We're recommended by the government of Berks County, PA.
Related sites:
Watt Watt. News about efficiency and conservation, written by readers of the site.
Home Power Magazine. All about renewable energy for the home.
Thin House. Blog about a family committed to cutting its energy use by 80%.
No-Impact Man. Blog about a family striving to have no net impact. (i.e., What little they use, they offset.) Inspirational.
Off-Grid. News and resources about living without being connected to a utility company.
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If you like this site, you might also like some
of my other sites:
Battery
Guide
Which battery is best? We cover
rechargeable and alkaline batteries to show you what's hot,
what's not, and the best way to charge them. (visit
now)
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The
Military Budget as Cookies
This excellent animation from TrueMajority shows in
graphic detail (using Oreo cookies) how ridiculously, large
the military budget is, and how we could solve many domestic
problems with a modest 12% cut. A must-see. (watch
it now)
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Carbon offsets
Carbon offsets are an interesting idea for slowing
down climate change. You invest in things which reduce
pollution, and this offsets the amount of pollution
produced by your own consumption. The kinds of things you
can invest in include:
- developing non-polluting energy sources (e.g., wind,
solar, methane recapture)
- helping businesses upgrade their old equipment so it
produces less pollution
- planting trees
There are lots of companies selling carbon offsets,
and they're relatively cheap. A typical American can
offset his or her greenhouse pollution for about $216/yr.
You can offset your car for about $80/yr.
Some environmentalists have criticized carbon offsets
for various reasons, but one fact remains:
Buying quality carbon offsets is better
than doing nothing.
Of course, you don't have to do nothing. You can
drive
less, use
less electricity, and stop
eating meat. These things will dramatically reduce your
carbon footprint.
But if you won't do these things, for whatever
reason, then you're creating a lot of carbon, and in that
case buying carbon offsets is better than
nothing. And even if you do reduce your
carbon footprint, you're still generating some
greenhouse gases. Nobody gets their consumption down to
zero. I don't drive, I use a tiny amount of electricity, and
I eat a strict vegetarian diet. And I still buy carbon
offsets. Even though my carbon footprint is small, it still
exists. Purchasing high quality carbon offsets lets
me mitigate the amount of greenhouse gases generated by my
consumption. It can do the same for you. As CarbonFund.org's
slogan goes, "Reduce what you can, offset what you
can't."
Below I'll address the criticism against carbon offsets.
But first let me tell you about how to get them:
How to buy carbon
offsets
Carbon offsets are sold by the ton (i.e., how
many tons of carbon pollution you want to offset). So
you first need to have an idea of how much carbon your
lifestyle produces, which we call your carbon
footprint. If you want to take the shortcut, the
average in the U.S. is 17 tons for a person and 38 tons
for a household. Most carbon offset vendors have
calculators on their sites that ask you a few questions
so you can find your own personalized carbon footprint,
but I've found most of them to be unreasonably cumbersome
and several to be wildly inaccurate. You might prefer to
use my own Carbon
Footprint Calculator, which I think is fast, easy,
and accurate.
Once you know how many tons you produce, you can go
shopping. There are dozens of different websites that
sell offsetcs, so all you have to do is pick one, type in
how many tons you want to purchase, and click Buy. But
just like with anything else you can buy, the quality of
the product differs from one site to another. Some
companie's offsets might be focused on projects that have
questionable value for carbon reduction (like
tree-planting), or on projects that were going to happen
anyway even without selling the offsets -- in which case
they're not really offsets. To help the consumer find
high-quality offsets, I list some of my favorites below,
along with some lists of vendor reviews in case you want
to do your your own research.
Where to buy carbon
offsets
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Carbon offset
vendors (buy directly)
Climate
Care. Rated in the Top 10 by Carbon
Catalog, this company focuses on clean energy in
developing countries with projects such as wind
power, methane from biomass, and fuel substitution.
My favorite project is using bicycle-pedal power
for irrigation! Offsets sell for $15.50 per
ton.
Good
Energy Initiative. All their
projects are in Israel, and they're one of the only
well-ranked companies to include solar power in
their project mix. They also promote methane energy
and efficient lighting. Offsets sell for $9-15 per
ton.
Green
Mountain Energy. This is a
Texas-based utility and you're investing mostly in
their own solar- and wind-power projects. (They
also deal in Chicago Climate Exchange Credits and
reforestation.) Offsets are $14 per ton.
Bonneville
Environmental Foundation. Mostly
solar. If you want your offsets to support solar,
this is it. Most other vendors don't support solar
at all, and for those who do, it's only a small
part of their project mix. But BEF
concentrates on solar, financing literally
dozens of small solar projects. Their offsets cost
twice as much as competing offets, though, at
$29.40 per ton. Also, their website is painfully
slow.
LiveCooler.
They have one project: Providing
compact-fluorescent lightbulbs to low-income
families. If you like CFL's, this is your project.
Offsets are $13/ton.
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Directories
& Reviews of vendors
Carbon
Catalog. Thank god! Carbon Catalog ranks
around 100 different offset vendors on both level
of transparency and quality of their projects.
Their handy table shows each company's rating,
price per ton, and whether they're a business or
non-profit. What's more, you can click through on
any vendor to see their exact list of projects, to
see whether they're dealing in wind, methane,
solar, or reforestation. A great place to choose
where to get your offsets.
List
of certifications. EcoBusinessLinks
has put together a guide listing which vendors'
projects have been verified by which watchdogs. I
don't think this is as useful as the Carbon Catalog
(above), but if you're looking for vendors that
meet a particular certification, then this will be
helpful.
Tufts
University's picks. The Tufts
Climate Initiative picked their top four favorite
vendors, listed below. By the way, Tufts also
recommended choosing vendors whose projects meet
The
Gold Standard, the highest standard of quality
for offset projects in existence.
- My
Climate. The only vendor top-ranked by both
Carbon Catalog and Tufts.
- atmosfair.
Their website focuses on air travel, but an
offset is an offset, so it's good for any kind
of carbon you want to offset.
- Climate
Friendly. Invests in a wind farm in India.
Also buys "the highest quality, independently
verified carbon offsets available globally" from
larger vendors.
- Native
Energy. I have mixed feelings about this, as
dairy is a wasteful industry (it's like trying
to find alternative ways to fuel Hummers), and
because milk
isn't healthy anyway. (Second
article on that topic.)
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Criticism of carbon
offsets
License to pollute
Probably the biggest criticism of carbon
offsets is that it essentially gives the purchaser a
"license to pollute". The buyer may think they get a
free pass for their bad behavior, rather than changing
that behavior.
My feeling is, for the person or business who won't or
can't change their behavior, then carbon offsets are
better than nothing. And even people who live a
low-impact lifestyle still have some impact, and the same
goes for them: buying offsets is better than not buying
them.
The "license to pollute" criticism only goes so far.
After all, we don't say that all knives are bad just
because sometimes they're used as weapons. By the same
token, I don't think it's fair to throw all carbon
offsets on the garbage heap just because some people
think that's all they need to do to go green. That is,
the problem isn't with the product, it's with how people
use it. The best way to address that is to make sure
people know that carbon offsets aren't a panacea, and
that the best way to prevent climate change is to use
less. I don't agree that throwing the baby out with the
bathwater (by eliminating carbon offsets) is a better way
to go.
Businesses get money for
pollution reduction measures they should have adopted on
their own, anyway.
Some carbon offsets give the proceeds to
businesses to get them to reduce the amount of pollution
they generate. A good question is, why are we giving
them this blackmail money? Why doesn't the government
simply require them to produce less pollution? Why
do companies like DuPont need consumers to pay for
DuPont to clean up its own mess? Such offsets might be
compared to a child saying, "I won't hit my brother if
you give me $5." The child should be discouraged from
hitting his brother even if he doesn't enjoy a payout as
a result.
The answer to this one is easy: If this bothers
you, don't buy this type of offset. Choose an offset
vendor who's investing in renewable energy sources, like
wind, solar or methane recapture. Carbon
Catalog ranks vendors by the quality of their
projects, and specifically lists each project a vendor
invests in, so you can see for yourself where your money
is going.
Something else to consider is that while it's
uncomfortable to give welfare to rich companies for
pollution reduction that they should be doing on their
own anyway, if they won't do it on their own
anyway, then buying the offsets reduces pollution.
Unfair as it may be, it does get the pollution
down. We can complain about the injustice all we
want, but in the meantime the planet is frying....
Reforestation is
dicey.
Carbon offsets which rely on tree-planting
might not work, because when those trees are cut down or
burn down in the future, their absorbed carbon gets
released again.
No problem, simply buy offsets from a vendor which
doesn't focus on tree-planting. Use Carbon
Catalog to find a vendor you like.
Worthless
offsets.
Some shady carbon offsets actually do nothing
to reduce greenhouse emissions. Others reward
businesses for conservation measures they were already
going to do anyway. (more
at FT.com)
The answer to this one is the same as the last
two: Simply don't buy this type of offset. Use
Carbon
Catalog to choose an offset vendor who's investing in
renewable energy sources, like wind, solar or methane
recapture, or in tree-planting. And make sure the vendor
is certified by a reputable, independent group.
No incentive for preserving
existing forests.
The president of Guyana criticized the Kyoto
Protocol's carbon trading program, saying, "If you cut
down trees and you plant them back you get money, if you
preserve them, you don't get anything."
(more
from Terra Daily)
I agree, this is ridiculous. There's not much you and
I can do about this. Still, while there's some disparity
in the system, our purchase of carbon offsets doesn't
hurt Guyana's forests. They'll still be there whether we
buy our offsets or not. While an argument can be made
that the system is unfair, that's not really an argument
against buying offsets.
If this convinces you that carbon offsets are worth
buying, then I hope you'll actually buy
some carbon offsets. :)
Links
Wikipedia's
article on carbon offsets
Last update: April
2009
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