One way of reducing your impact on climate change – potentially – is through buying carbon offsets. For example, when you book a flight on Expedia you have the option of buying a TerraPass:
Of course, you want to make sure that when you buy an offset, it actually offsets your carbon emissions. For example, you want your funds to support a project (a) that reduces carbon emissions and (b) wouldn't have happened anyway.
The San Jose Mercury News published some tips on buying carbon offsets on Sunday. Among their suggestions was finding out whether the offsets are certified to particular standards.
I've been buying TerraPasses to offset my plane travel for a litle over a year, but I couldn't figure out from the web site whether TerraPass was certified according to a standard like he Voluntary Carbon Standard, the California Climate Action Registry's offset protocols, or the Climate Community and Biodiversity Standard. So I e-mailed their support to find out. Their response (below the fold) seemed satisfactory to me. But if there's someone reading this who knows more about CO2 offsets than I and has a different opinion, I'd be delighted to hear about it.
My e-mail to TerraPass
I have purchased TerraPasses in the past to offset some of the carbon dioxide emissions from my air travel. A recent article in the San Jose Mercury News (http://www.mercurynews.com/greenenergy/ci_6724002?nclick_check=1) pointed out that it is useful to know whether the offsets I am buying are certified to the Voluntary Carbon Standard, the California Climate Action Registry's offset protocols, or the Climate Community and Biodiversity Standard. I was unable to find this information on your web site. To what standard are TerraPass offsets certified?Kent Holsinger
Professor of Biology
P.S. I maintain a small, little read blog
(http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/uncommon-ground). May I have permission to
post your reply to my blog? Thank you.
The response from TerraPass1
Hey Kent:
Good question, and the answer is "not yet", but let me tell you why. We are examining each and everyone of these standards for our projects in 2008. Let me address why each one was not appropriate in 2007. Recall that because of TerraPass' policies, we must match your 2007 purchase with 2007 reductions.
1) Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS): The functional version of this standard is not actually out yet. We were involved in the the stakeholder sessions for version two, and are optimistic that we can use in 2008.
2) California Climate Action Registry (CCAR): The only protocols issued on CCAR have been three forestry-related protocols and a manure methane protocol. We're quite interested in the latter, but since it was published in July, can't use if for 2007 projects. The other three we can't use as we don't use trees.
3) Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard (CCB): Again, this applies to trees only, so we can't use it.
Unfortunately, the article didn't reflect good work in standards already accomplished, and the progress the environmental community is making to enhance them even further.
I hope that helps, and thanks for your inquiry and support.
Best,
Tom
PS -- of course you can blog this.
TerraPass Operations
1Received the same day. I appreciate the quick response
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