$10/ton: Costs of offsetting your carbon guilt

Climate distilled: On climate change: sustainability is not enough, but it is a good start

Going to lectures on climate change might not be everyone’s ideal way to start the weekend. And while I wouldn’t call last Friday’s lecture a mood booster, I’m glad that I attended.
The keynote speaker for the President’s Science Symposium presented to a crowded Kresge audience during last week’s Common Hour. The speaker, Dr. Daniel Schrag, is both a professor of geology and the director of the Center of the Environment at Harvard University. Climate change, as Schrag described it, is a massive experiment on the order of nothing ever before seen by the hominid species. Our planet is likely to experience its residual effects for tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of years. The planet’s “recovery time” will hinge on how much longer we prolong fossil fuel combustion.
According to the scenarios presented by Schrag, our options for a clean-energy future are: highly efficient use of all forms of energy; exclusive use of zero-carbon (both renewables and nuclear) power sources, and large-scale CO2 sequestration. Schrag believes that a realistic zero-net-carbon future must include all three.

Climate distilled: A perfect storm: Haiyan raises fears of “hypercanes”

In the weeks following the landfall of Typhoon Haiyan, the role of climate change has dominated public discourse. Is a changing climate to blame for the devastation? This is a weighty accusation, and one that forces us to re-examine our positions on climate action and related debates.On November 8, Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines claiming 5,598 lives and displacing another 3.8 million. With winds of up to 195 mph, it was one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded and, according to USAID, the US government has sent nearly $60 million in relief funds.
“Tropical cyclone,” “hurricane” and “typhoon” refer to the same type of storm. These systems generally form in waters warmer than 80 degrees, through a combination of warm surface water and air, low pressure and the force of the Earth’s rotation. Additionally, tropical cyclones are generally “triggered” by a thunderstorm or similar event—most of the Atlantic hurricanes that hit our east coast, for example, start out as thunderstorms on the west coast of Africa.
Recently some scientists have started investigating the possible effects of climate-warmed oceans on cyclones. One of these researchers is world-renowned atmospheric scientist Dr. Kerry Emanuel of MIT, who, incidentally, is currently on sabbatical here at Bowdoin.

Climate distilled

$10/ton: Costs of offsetting your carbon guilt

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Emily Tucker

Columnist

November 15, 2013

If you could pay someone to erase your carbon footprint, would you do it?

Let me rephrase that: would you pay someone to erase your carbon footprint, even if you weren’t sure that it would work?

This is the fascinating, if contentious, promise of the carbon-offsetting industry.

The idea behind carbon offsetting is that by supporting clean energy producers and projects that trap greenhouse gases, individuals and organizations can effectively cancel out their own carbon emissions.

The main way of accomplishing this is through purchasing Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) and carbon offsets.

When renewable electricity is produced on a mass-market scale, it is sent to the electric grid, where it is combined with conventional fossil fuel-generated energy and then distributed to consumers. RECs provide the opportunity to purchase “green energy” without having to buy energy exclusively produced from renewable sources. This allows more expensive renewable energies to compete on equal footing with conventional power. According to the EPA—which created the program—purchasing RECs supports producers of renewable energy, and in the long term will help renewables take market share away from conventional power.

Carbon offsets take a different approach to “negating” carbon emissions. When an individual or an organization purchases carbon offsets, they are paying a company to pursue a project that traps greenhouse gases that have already been emitted, or to prevent future emissions.
Common offset projects include trapping and converting methane from landfills into usable energy, building wind farms, and upgrading fuel and building efficiency. Depending on the number of offsets purchased, they can theoretically “cancel out” emissions from actions like airplane travel, driving, and conventional electricity use.

Most carbon offsetting companies charge between $5 and $25 per ton of CO2, averaging about $10/ton. One ton of CO2 is the amount emitted during a 2,000 mile airplane flight, and the same amount emitted by an average US household over two months.

Like many solutions perceived as quick-fixes, carbon offsetting has generated controversy among environmental-minded people. Many take issue with the idea of congratulating people who pay to reduce their carbon footprints without making any personal changes. The demand for a carbon offsetting industry, they say, indicates a deeper conflict between western-materialist society and environmental justice. They instead argue that fundamental changes in both the energy sector and western culture must be made in order for real progress to take place.

Perhaps even more problematic is the fear that many in the environmental community don’t believe that carbon capture schemes really work as effectively as they claim to. Calculating long-term carbon storage trends can be a tricky business, and widely varying prices for offsetting one ton of CO2 can inspire doubts about the efficacy of certain programs.

From a pragmatic perspective, RECs are a step in the right direction. For some people and institutions, generating all of their electricity on-site using renewables will never be possible or reasonable, given the availability of natural resources. For them, paying extra to keep renewable energy producers, running and innovating on the main grid is their best possible contribution to the clean energy movement.

Common sense indicates that we should think of carbon offsets as something akin to ‘climate change charities’. If a business is interested in purchasing offsets, it should research companies and their projects as if it were an average person planning to donate to a lesser-known charity.
If businesses find themselves unconvinced by any carbon offsetting schemes, but still want to fight the degradation of our planet, they should consider donating to more mainstream environmental nonprofits. They might not be paying to inject CO2 into bedrock, but it’s better than nothing.

Bowdoin’s Carbon Neutrality Implementation Plan acknowledges RECs and carbon credits, most of them Maine-based, as necessary components of a zero-carbon goal, but “only to the extent that there are no efficiency or on-site power generation options that cost less per ton of avoided CO2.” Given Bowdoin’s pledge to buy solar panel-produced elecricity from the planned array at the former Naval Air Base, it will be interesting to follow the College’s future decisions regarding on-site electricity generation as an alternative to offsets.

Comments are permanently closed.