What is a carbon offset?
Carbon offsets are an easy and inexpensive way to balance your environmental impact by funding programs and technologies that prevent or sequester the emission of greenhouse gases. Carbon offsets are purchased from a third party to help cancel out, or “offset,” the environmental consequences produced by our energy-intensive lifestyles.
The carbon offsets you earn with Green Gas affiliates reduce your net impact on the environment. To get a few different viewpoints, let’s start with some definitions. Carbon offset is the result of any action specifically taken to remove from, or prevent the release of, carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in order to balance emissions taking place elsewhere. (The Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting, And Verification Of Climate Change Mitigation Projects, Ch. 2, pg. 14. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Edward Vine and Jayant Sathaye, 1997.) The act of reducing or avoiding GHG emissions in one place in order to “offset” GHG emissions occurring somewhere else.
A carbon offset is a certificate representing the reduction of one metric ton (2,205 lbs) of carbon dioxide emissions, the principal cause of global warming. Although complex in practice, carbon offsets are fairly simple in theory. If you develop a project that reduces carbon dioxide emissions, every ton of emissions reduced results in the creation of one carbon offset. Project developers can then sell these offsets to finance their projects. There are hundreds of different types of carbon reduction projects. For example, a wind farm generates clean energy, which reduces carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants. In order to finance its operations, a wind farm can sell these reductions in the form of carbon offsets.
