CarbonTracking

We've had the first generation of carbon-offsetting. You pay someone to plant trees, or you pay someone to generate green-electricity, maybe you pay someone to become a vegetarian. Its all a bit intangible sometimes, the time-period in which the offset occurs is sometimes unclear and the offset may be occurring on the other side of the world.

How about if your offsets had an impact in your home area ? How about if your offsets guaranteed an effect within a defined timespan, for example 10 years ? How about if your offsets paid to build the kind of society that you think we should all live in ? This is what carbon-offsetting 2.0 is all about. Its about helping your neighbours, friends, family to implement changes that reduce energy usage, changes that you may already have made in your own life. The thinking is that we should get everyone doing the easy stuff first, the stuff with the high-impact/low-cost.

I'll present a few suggestions below with all calculations are based on the following stats:

• the average Irish house, 150 square meters, uses 4000 kWh/year in electricity
• the same house uses 20,000 kWh/year in heating, the equivalent of 1800 liters of heating oil
• the average driver drives 15,000 km a year, the average European car emits 160 grams CO2/km

Here's a few of the prime candidates with some quick calculations of the cost of each ton of CO2 removed.

• Buy them an electricity monitor,something like Current Cost. Anecdotal evidence indicates an average drop of 10% in electricity usage. Cost : €60. Benefits :a drop in usage of 400 kWh/year saving €76/year in electricity bills and 250 kg CO2/year
• Buy them a digital-programmable thermostat. Ensuring that heat is delivered right when you want it, and just the right amount. Heating systems with proper thermostat control can burn 10-15% less fuel. Cost : €60/€70. Benefits : 2000~3000 kWh less heat energy used. For an oil-heated house, this means roughly 250 liters less per year, saving of €150/year at current prices and 650 kg CO2/year
• Switch their electricity supplier : Its beautiful in its simplicity. In Ireland the major supplier has a carbon-footprint of 0.624kg of CO2 per unit of electricity. The green candidate, Airtricity, has a footprint of 0.050kg of CO2. Switching supplier would have the direct effect of saving 2.2 tons CO2 for the average house. Airtricity is a shade less than 2c dearer per unit so this would cost you €80 extra per year, a price of €36/tCO2 saved, not far from the market price.
• Buy them CFL's : If you replace a 100W bulb by a 15W CFL bulb, and if that bulb is used on average 2 hours a day, then over the course of the year you'll save €11 in electricity bills per bulb and 62 kg CO2 per year and per bulb
• Pay for extra insulation : The ultimate in un-sexy presents, imagine showing up at your girlfriend house with a roll of rockwool insulation under your arm. But, when you tell her that 30% of her heating bill is going out the roof if she has standard insulation from 15 years ago and that 4 inches extra of rock-wool will put a stop to it, things may get really hot. At a cost of €10/meter squared, a three bed semi can get insulated for €900. Benefits : 6000 kWh less heat energy used. For an oil-heated house, this means roughly 600 liters less per year, savings of €360/year at current prices and 1.56 tonnes CO2/year

There it is, local is the new global. Of course, maybe not everyone knows someone with a dodgy oil boiler and bad insulation. Maybe there's a space in the market for the concept of a "Regional Offset Company" where all money paid by local people/businesses goes to actions such as the above in the locality.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 10:59 pm and is filed under emissions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.