As part of Blog Action Day, I wanted to take a moment to talk about carbon credits. Just this past weekend, my friend Jeremy came to visit from Rochester and did the environmental thing of buying carbon credits to offset the carbon emissions generated by his individual air travel. Miss Possible and I have toiled with the idea of doing something similar for our wedding, and if this is the case, I’m sure you’ll be learning a lot more about this next July.
Basically the carbon credit market is a place to buy and sell the right to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Here’s an example from Wikipedia:
Consider a business that owns a factory putting out 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in a year. Its government then enacts a law that limits the emissions that the business can produce. So the factory is given a quota of say 80,000 tonnes per year. The factory either reduces its emissions to 80,000 tonnes or is required to purchase carbon credits to offset the excess.
After costing up alternatives the business may decide that it is uneconomical or infeasible to invest in new machinery. Instead may choose to buy carbon credits on the open market from organizations that have been approved as being able to sell legitimate carbon credits.
The credits purchased are likely either from a company that does not reach it’s yearly quota (and wishes to sell their excess) or from a company that is involved in an action that reduces the damage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (ie. plants trees). The fact that there is a limited supply of carbon credits on the market, then makes it worthwhile to offset your personal carbon emissions — which will then reduce the availability of credits for those companies that wish to pollute.
If I still had my red Nissan Sentra from high school, the cost to offset this car’s emissions for a year (averaging 12,000 miles per year) would be $39.95 via Terrapass.com. So, when you’re thinking about what you can do to save the environment. Think about offsetting your carbon footprint by buying carbon credits to contradict your emissions, the next time you fly or renew your registration.
