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Q. Dear Umbra,
Lately I have been traveling a lot for work. This has made me seriously consider buying offsets for these trips. I know that it is better to not travel at all, but outside of quitting my job I can’t get around it. I have considered spending money on projects around the house to lessen my footprint, but using a carbon offset seems to give you more bang for the buck. My question is, are these offsets really helping or should I save my money for a bigger ticket item like a solar water heater?
Kevin E.
Raymond, Wash.
A. Dearest Kevin,
Or you could find another way to go.What an elegant weaving together of our two most recent discussions, on carbon offsets and solar water heaters. Bonus points for you!
As we discussed last week (don’t I sound like your mom or dad? was there a discussion, or just a monologue?), it may be most helpful to think of personal offsets as a contribution to a renewable energy project. In the best-case scenario—with all the usual caveats about sussing out the quality of the offset here—offsets help support renewable energy. This is good, because we do need more renewables capacity on our electric grid, people in deforested areas need solar ovens, landfill methane should be captured, wind turbines should be built, etc. However! Remember that voluntary offsets do not erase, vacuum up, cancel out, or otherwise negate the actual emissions you produce.
As we also discussed last week, solar water heaters are a proven, easily adopted technology that can make a real difference in your home emissions, replacing up to 70 percent of your water heater’s footprint with galaxy-derived, renewable, carbon-neutral energy.
If we consider your travel emissions as but a subset of your total life emissions, it may help you see a bit more clearly how to choose a compensatory action. Installing a solar water heater, or any equivalent proven environmental home investment, will reduce your actual total emissions. The actual amount of greenhouse gases for which you are personally responsible—Kevinpogenic greenhouse gases—will shrink. Achieving this real shrinkage is what I would recommend.
I’m not alone, either. Voluntary climate offset advisories recommend the same, including the Stockholm Environment Institute, Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund ... Do what you can to improve your personal footprint. This, by the way, should include discussing with your employer whether there are ways to reduce the amount you travel, or reduce the impact of your travel. You haven’t said much about where you go, or why, or how you get there, but there may be creative solutions that could help—carpool, or conference call, or even train instead of plane.
If you still must travel for work and if you have money left after you take more concrete emissions-reduction steps at home, by all means support renewable energy projects via offsetting or other methods. Vocally supporting a solid national cap and trade program, and your regional climate plan, are also vital actions that shouldn’t cost you much money at all.
Umbrapogenically,
Umbra
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Comments
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tboggia Posted 11:28 am
12 Oct 2009
What I did was to make sure to only book non-stop tickets. The vast majority of GHGs from air travel come from take-off and landing. This means that if you have a layover you are almost doubling your emissions.
The other thing I am working on is writing a proposal to prioritize Virgin Airlines, even if it might cost a little more, for all travel booked by my organization. Virgin, contrary to virtually all other carriers, is actively lobbying for a climate bill and more regulation on airline pollution. Their aircrafts are 25% more efficient than the industry average and they are experimenting with bio-fuels. Plus, I seem to remember that they buy offsets with a certain percentage of their profits, don't remember details though.
Good question!
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solarkismet Posted 12:44 pm
12 Oct 2009
An example of replacing the water heater to save CO2:
- Switching from an electric water heater (if you are primarily in a coal electricity area) to a natural gas one saves carbon and requires no miracle technology in the course of normal replacement cycles
- Adding a solar water heater if you have a natural gas water heater might not be as carbon beneficial as replacing an electric appliance and saving coal based electricity
- Adding a solar water heater and switching to an electric back-up (I've seen it suggested by a solar installer) is still carbon beneficial but you're throwing some of the benefit out the window by changing the back-up source
There's also relativity of the impacts:
* Gasoline has about 20 lbs CO2/gallon
* Electricity has varying amounts of carbon per kwh (depends on where you live) but let's say 125 lbs CO2 per 100 kWh
* Natural gas has 12 lbs per therm
So for an average American in a year:
* 500 gallons of is 10,000 lbs CO2
* 10,000 kWh is 12,500 lbs CO2
* 200 therms is 2400 lbs CO2
Clearly there are regional and user specific differences, but offsetting natural gas should not be your primary target (exceptions being where coal is less predominant). Drive less and use less electricity as your focus.
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wolfger Posted 6:22 pm
12 Oct 2009
When considering supporting efforts to reduce carbon production one should be aware that one can either support cleaner power sources or one could help reduce the number of consumers of carbon. Consider that of the 200 million annual births globally, that around 70 million are unwanted, which is close to the annual increase in global population. For every birth voluntarily prevented, the generation of around 1500 tons of CO2 are prevented in the developed world. In the less developed world around 20 tons of CO2 are prevented. Family planning education and ready availability of birth control are the most effective ways to prevent unwanted births even in poor countries. The Optimum Population Trust estimates that
"The $7 cost of abating a tonne of CO2 using family planning compares with $24 (15) for wind power, $51 (31) for solar, $57-83 (35-51) for coal plants with carbon capture and storage, $92 (56) for plug-in hybrid vehicles and $131 (80) for electric vehicles."
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/reducingemissions.pdf
Supporting Planned Parenthood or similar organizations will achieve this. One could also consider supporting educational organization such as the Population Media Center which creates radio soap programs to achieve broadcast education of family planning in less developed countries.
http://www.populationmedia.org/
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