Saturday, January 16, 2010

Factors To Consider Before Purchasing Carbon Offset

By Jonathan Bennett

With the threat of global warming looming large over our fragile environment, free market solutions like carbon offset and carbon credits that are succeeding as powerful tools for environment preservation have been able to attract the attention of individuals as well as companies.

If you have been responsible for ecological degradation and now want to contribute towards cleaning the environment, then you can buy an amount of carbon offset equivalent to your entire amount of CO2 emissions. The amount you invest on a carbon offset will help finance green undertakings like wind farms that generate energy without resulting in dangerous emissions.

Before going for carbon offset, you must first look at your daily actions that are responsible for emissions of greenhouse gases. Among our usual actions that result in carbon emissions, the most important are driving, travelling by air and making use of appliances that cause high electricity usage.

After you have identified all these actions that result in emissions, you should seriously attempt to lessen some of them and stop some altogether. Such an action oriented approach would lower the adverse effects that you create on the planet. You can lower your energy consumption by using low energy lighting, by driving less and also by installing proper insulation to save power while making use of heating or cooling appliances.

After you have considered all the aspects where you can act effectively towards lowering emissions, you should calculate the impact of your remaining actions on the environment, i.e., calculate your remaining carbon footprint. The method of calculating this footprint changes from one activity to another, but there are several online calculators which can help you in the matter.

Carbon offset providers offset carbon emission from your actions by lowering emissions in any part of the globe through your buying of offset. Projects provided by offset providers for lowering emissions are abundant, and you can put your money in any one that seems appropriate to you. But you must be cautious before investing in a project. To make sure that your money will be used judiciously you must only pick projects with solid credentials. Projects that have passed authenticity tests conducted by authentic accrediting bureaus are the best ones to put money in, as they have the stamp of approval and can be relied upon.

Finally, you must equip yourself with sufficient knowledge on the topic. It will help you find out who the most reputed offset providers are, what type of schemes are most appropriate for an investment, and how to monitor the performance of the scheme that you have put your money in.

About the Author:

No comments:

Post a Comment