Reducing Our Footprint-Carbon Offsets

If you've read my last two entrys on carbon measurements for a carbon footprint, you may wonder what to do if you want to be carbon neutral but there are activities you can't avoid.  A final way of reducing your energy use, or carbon footprint, is to purchase carbon offsets. Carbon offsets can be purchased through services that plant trees or support businesses that reduce greenhouse effects, or develop cleaner energy. The idea is that these actions are cancelling out our energy use by reducing the effects of greenhouse gases in roughly equal amounts.  Some folks like to purchase offsets to make their impact completely carbon neutral, others do it as a supplement. In either case, be sure you're taking other measures in your day to day life, such as those in my recent post Leave a Smaller Footprint,  in addition to considering carbon offsets.

There are a couple of concerns with the business of selling carbon offsets. While solid in concept, there are unscrupulous businesses as in any specialty. Another concern is the motivation of individual’s purchasing them.

It’s important that a person or a business doesn’t just purchase offsets to “be green” or alleviate some unsettling feeling that it’s the right thing to do. A serious polluter could theoretically pollute to their hearts – or wallets – delight, and then purchase carbon offsets and claim they’re a green company. You see the problem. If offsets are purchased without also making a sincere effort to actually decrease emissions, then the impact is negligible.

Last year an article by NPR looked at concerns that there is no way to know if a company you’re buying offsets from is really investing your money in reducing carbons impact. There is also the possibility that you are paying for an offset that’s already been sold to someone else as an offset. Ask questions, research, and beware of tips that they might not be on the up and up. A comment to a Grist post noted that the person had bought offsets from a company on line that then turned around and used all kinds of energy to send her a thank you in the mail.

The Grist Article “A Guide to Offsetting Your Carbon Emissions”  lists a number of offset companies to consider. There are also the well researched Be Green offsets available from Green Irene.