News from the net

Citation

(2008), "News from the net", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/meq.2008.08319bag.001

News from the net

On the internet, erasing your role in climate change seems as easy as ordering a DVD – and cheaper than a cup of coffee a day. With a click, a credit card and $99, visitors can pay a Silver Spring non-profit group, Carbonfund.org, to “offset” a year’s worth of greenhouse-gas emissions. Whatever the customer put into the atmosphere – by flying, driving, using electricity – the site promises to cancel out, by funding projects that reduce pollutants.

Sites such as this one, offering absolution from the modern nag of climate guilt, have created a US$55 million industry that once would have been beyond the greenest of imaginations. The market for “voluntary carbon offsets” now encompasses dozens of sellers and thousands of buyers, including individuals and corporations.

But in some cases, these customers may be buying good feelings and little else. A closer look reveals an unregulated market in which some improvements bought by customers are only estimated, extrapolated, hoped-for or nil. Some offsets support projects that would have gone forward anyway. Others deliver results difficult to measure.

Carbonfund.org, for example, has advertised offsets that finance wind farms and tree-planting projects. But some wind farms said the donations have not led to anything new. And the benefits from some tree projects were unclear enough that Carbonfund.org no longer uses them to back offsets.

Many offset sellers do seem to deliver measurable cuts to pollution. One Vermont company, for instance, has been praised for offering customers a chance to support projects in development, effectively guaranteeing positive future impact.

But the market for the product grew by 80 per cent in 2006 alone, according to a recent report from the market analysts New Carbon Finance and Ecosystem Marketplace. That was apart from the Chicago Climate Exchange, where companies can trade credits for greenhouse-gas reductions among themselves. That exchange has made efforts to verify that carbon offsets sold represent real pollution reductions.

Large corporations have bought offsets by the millions. Last month, one utility, American Electric Power, agreed to offset about 4.6 million tons of carbon dioxide by paying for projects that reduce methane – a powerful pollutant – seeping from farm manure.

For individual consumers, an offset can be a tempting alternative to a radical lifestyle makeover. People concerned about climate change could sell their cars and cover their roofs with solar panels. Or, on an offset site, they could become “carbon neutral” with a click.

Further information can be obtained at: www.Carbonfund.org