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Carbon Offset Market in last year or so has seen an increase in the number of companies providing voluntary offset certificates to people who want to offset their carbon footprints. Attention and investment in such market has seen an enormous increase, majority of which can be attributed to awareness about global warming and climate change, where people have become more conscious about doing their bit for the environment. Second, a big marketing campaign by a website hits the sensibility of people that they tend to take notice of it. Carbon Calculators provided on various websites let you calculate your carbon footprints which can then be offset at the same place. It’s easy it’s convenient and makes your car adore a sticker of “carbon neutral family”.
But what calculators and big advertisements campaigns don’t show is how these footprints are calculated, in which projects your money will be invested, is the project credible and verified by right authorities. Let’s try and analyze some aspects of these unregulated carbon offset market. Carbon CalculatorsMost of the voluntary offset companies use their own standards of calculating carbon footprints. A quick search of ‘carbon calculators’ will get you a list of websites providing calculations to calculate your air flight emission, your whole family energy consumption, car emission etc. Each calculator gives a different result based on its assumption principles and some don’t even talk about calculations just tell us that an American family on an average uses 11000kWh of energy, and ‘click here to offset’. In a market which is expected to grow to be a multiple billion dollar market in next few years, don’t have any defined standards that are common across various companies providing such services! Lack of any such standards also raises concerns of whose right and who’s wrong.
Offset ProjectsMost of these companies claims to invest in Renewable Energy projects or green reforestation projects i.e., they plant tree for every dollar you pay. Biggest question is, are these renewable energy project certified and verified by any of the authorized governing bodies. Emission reductions claimed to be achieved are real and quantifiable to an extent that they are sustained over a period of time. What is the impact of the project in the neighbouring regions, what is the social and economical impact? Is the project appropriate to be done where it is being executed? How to make sure duplicate reductions are not sold or emission reduction has not been over estimated. Since there is no ruling body under which these projects are governed they tend to operate in an unregulated or self regulated way.
Trees are not the solution
Studies show that some of the air flight offset sold today may takes decades and decades to be offset by a tree. Many studies carried on by universities and other research bodies have confirmed the fact that forestation projects pose a big question as to the quality and credibility of offset claimed to be produced. Kyoto Protocol for climate change has identified targets for companies in developed countries to reduce their emission, but no such restriction and reduction targets exists for households. As the talks on climate change warms up, awareness and concern among general public has also picked up. People are much more concerned and demand for emission reduction from households is also increasing. This is a very good sign as reduction at lower level will all contribute to the reduction at a bigger level. But awareness about the offset and measures to curb emission is still not clear. As the industry grows it becomes all the more essential to establish standards or a body which overlooks such offset projects. Some countries are looking to regulate such offset mechanisms and want to enforce standards similar to CDM as the guidelines for such companies. Demand for carbon reduction from household sector is only going to see an increase in the coming years and people looking to be carbon neutral should evaluate all the above factors and more before they go ahead and decide to ‘click here for offset’. Similar articles
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It has more or less become normal these days to hear things like “Offset you flight emissions, buy carbon offset certificates and be carbon neutral” or “Invest in one of our project and remove your carbon footprints”. 
A major and a very big misconception is that planting a tree can lead to reduction in my carbon footprint or will offset and keep doing more in its life time. In real, trees are the least credible form of offset mechanism as they leak more carbon than they offset. There is a long time lag between when the pollution is generated and when the tree absorbs carbon dioxide. Too many questions remain unanswered as to how well the tree has to be maintained. Lekage in form of dead leaves and decomposed wood only add to the negativity. custom built computer
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