One of the biggest draws to carbon offsetting is the convenience of
it. You can fi nd TerraPasses and other carbon-offset options on
the shelves at many retailers as well as through the Internet. In
fact, most of the 67,000 TerraPasses that have been sold so far
have been purchased online, Arnold says. "Business is very good,"
he adds. "It's been roughly doubling every year."
TerraPass takes the revenues from its sales and invests in
wind-energy projects, projects that upgrade municipal landfi lls in
order to reduce the landfills' emissions, and biomass projects that
aim to create
energy from cow manure. Those investments add up to a
lot of carbon offsets. Last year, Arnold says, the carbon-credit
industry offset about 30 million tons of carbon emissions.
If you want to play the carbon offset credit game, start by
checking out an online carbon calculator. The one on the TerraPass
website (
www.terrapass.com)
calculates the amount of carbon that needs to be offset for a car,
home, dorm room, and even a wedding. Enter a few tidbits of
information such as your home's zip code and recent monthly energy
bills and you'll be told approximately how much carbon you're
emitting and what it will cost to counteract it.
The trading of carbon-offset credits has survived controversy, some
of which has stemmed from questions about whether certain credit
sellers are offering offsets of little or no value. Today,
companies like TerraPass engage third-party auditors to verify the
quality of the offsets. In the future, says Arnold, big changes
will come in the way consumers buy carbon offsets. "Just think
about how easy it is to buy travel insurance," he says. "You can
buy from the airline, at the airport - wherever you want. We have
to make carbon credits mainstream - a quick, easy, check-the-box
thing." And, it's already happening.
General Electric recently
announced a new credit card that lets cardholders earn not shopping
or travel rewards - or even cash back, for that matter - but
carbon-offset credits.