I think the "carbon offset" debate is caught up in "whose roof" rather than what exactly is the CO2 accounting.

If I put a wind turbine in my backyard and power my house, I'm considered green.  If I don't get wind, or if my town forbids it, I can pay to put an equivalent wind turbine somewhere else.

But whoops, by modern accounting the turbine a hundred miles away is an "offset" and bad.

(I'm sure you are familiar with the numerics Mr. Romm, that my backyard turbine in grid-tie would be equivalent to a grid-tie elsewhere.  It is all net-net.)

Well, I don't really trust carbon offsets.
However electron offsets, now that could work.

Essentially carbon offsets, except exclusively electricity.

Essentially you are paying to have the same number of green electrons put into the grid as you are consuming black.

That doesn't make so much sense because there are varying degrees of green and black.

Well, if we can account electrons, why not molecules?  In both cases it has roots in the physical sciences.

P.S. - John, if google used "bolean" searches we'd all be typing queries like: "troll" and "grist" and not "bridge".

...actually saving parts of their rainforests because they were being protected by offsets, that seems like a good use.

"Second, let's say I build a NEW data center and a new coal plant to go with it.  Then I pay someone else to build some wind turbines.  That doesn't strike me as behavior meriting recognition by the world as a 'green' leader."

500 years ago, Baltissare Castiglione said that if you were going to do something heroic, do it where the King can see you.

With a little variation, now for popular opinion, that is what solar panels or wind turbines on your own roof do.  They demonstrate to the public your heroic effort.

But, from a strict scientific measure, "topology" of the network is not what makes merit.  It is whether you put more green electrons into the network (anywhere on the planet) than you pull out, and whether you produce a net reduction in CO2 emissions over the course of your actions.

Sadly, some people will take this further, with a theoretical economic argument that any solar panel on your own roof, or any wind farm in the next state, is ultimately futile ... because they all (no matter where they are in the topology) reduce demand for fossil fuels, reducing prices, and bringing more users.

I hope that's not true ... but I'll note that it also is really an argument independent of the "length of cord" between source and sink.