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To make amends for emissions, businesses try offsets
Some companies are buying compensation for emissions they can't or won't eliminate.
Does building a wind-power plant in Brazil make up for pumping out greenhouse gases in the United States? That's the premise of offsets – the business of buying compensation for emissions that companies can't or won't eliminate. Last week, the Monitor's Laurent Belsie sat down with two experts who track and recommend offsets: Terry Kellogg, executive director of 1% for the Planet, a network of environmentally committed companies based in Newburyport, Mass.; and Bob Sheppard, deputy director of Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit advocacy group in Portsmouth, N.H. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:
When companies purchase an offset, are they just buying forgiveness?
Bob Sheppard: I think there's a common misperception, especially in the media now, that carbon offsets are basically an indulgence, or something similar to what the church sold in the Middle Ages. And it's really very far from that. It's really an opportunity for these companies to begin addressing the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions that result from their operations.
But what's the long-term benefit if someone plants trees in Brazil to absorb carbon? Don't a lot of those trees eventually die or burn?
Sheppard: That is one of the concerns of folks, especially regarding carbon sequestration. The good news is that there are a wide range of carbon offsets and that carbon sequestration or tree-planting, which probably 10 or 15 years ago was one of the leading choices out there, has now been supplemented by a number of other options.
What options are there?
Terry Kellogg: An example from my former employer, the Timberland Co., would be the idea that they could retrofit shower heads in inner-city dwellings.
How do low-flow shower heads reduce greenhouse gases?
Kellogg: If you're using less hot water over the course of the shower, then you're using less energy associated with heating that water.
Are there other examples?
Sheppard: There are a wide range of options. There are offsets that come from wind farms, solar projects, and from landfill methane projects, where organizations are tapping methane trapped in capped landfills and actually using it to generate electricity, [to] taking the manure from dairy farms ... and using it to generate electricity.
Kellogg: I think Bob and I would both agree: This is almost a last resort. The first thing you want to do is become absolutely as efficient as you possibly can. The second thing that a lot of companies try to do is invest directly in renewable energy. [At Timberland] we erected a wind turbine at a manufacturing facility and put a massive solar array on our distribution center. Then we looked at the emissions that were left over and asked: What can we do?
Do corporations buy in because the boss is committed – or do committed employees convince the boss?
Kellogg: Every company comes to it in a different way. It's very often an internal champion. But just as often, it's a passionate leader who brings people to the table and gets it done.
Companies want to save energy and resources because it saves them money. But why would they spend money to offset emissions that everyone else is sending into the atmosphere for free?
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