Saturday, January 16, 2010

Things To Remember When Purchasing Carbon Offset

By Jacquelyn Bennett

With growing awareness of the threats of global warming, instruments like carbon credits and carbon offset are turning more and more popular with individuals as well as companies as a successful means to safeguard our environment.

If you want to make up for the adverse effects your activities have had on nature, you can purchase a specific amount of carbon offset in order to cancel out the harm caused by you. Your purchase of a carbon offset helps fund environment friendly initiatives such as power generation units using wind farms and tidal energy.

Before venturing into carbon offset, you must first look at your everyday activities that are responsible for emissions of greenhouse gases. Common activities that result in a substantial proportion of carbon emissions for most people are driving cars, air travel, and using home appliances.

After you have listed out all these actions that result in emissions, you must earnestly attempt to reduce some of them and get rid of some altogether. This would allow you to lower some amount of your carbon footprint through your own initiative. For instance, you can lower emissions by driving less often, making use of fluorescent lamps, and installing better insulation to reduce energy usage on heating or cooling.

After you have thought about all the areas where you can act successfully towards lowering emissions, you must calculate the impact of your remaining actions on the environment, i.e., estimate your remaining carbon footprint. The method of calculating this footprint varies from one action to another, but there are several online calculators which can be of great help in this regard.

Carbon offset providers offset carbon emission from your activities by reducing emissions in any region of the world through your offset purchase. Projects offered by offset providers for reducing emissions are plenty, and you can invest in any one that seems suitable to you. But you need to exercise caution while making your choice. You should only put your money in recognised and transparent projects to avoid the risk of the funds being squandered away. Many accrediting bodies conduct rigorous tests on authenticity and effectiveness to certify projects, and it is always a sensible idea to put money in an approved and recognized project.

Finally, you should equip yourself with adequate knowledge on the subject. Through research, you will come to know the genuine offset providers and the kinds of projects that are suitable for investment, and you can also carefully monitor how the project you have put your money in is performing.

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