Carbon Offsets
What are Carbon Offsets
What Are Carbon Offsets?
Wikipedia defines Carbon offsetting as the act of reducing ("offsetting") greenhouse gas emissions. A well-known example is the planting of trees to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from personal air travel.
The idea of paying for emission-reductions elsewhere instead of reducing by own actions is also known from the closely related concept of emissions trading. However, in contrast to emissions trading, which is regulated by a strict formal and legal framework, carbon offsets generally refer to voluntary acts by individuals or companies that are commonly arranged by commercial or not-for-profit carbon-offset providers.
Cap and Trade or Cap and Tax?
Cap and Trade or Cap and Tax?
By Susan Arterian Chang
First Published April 2009
Whenever oil and gas prices plummet, renewable energy projects tend to hit the skids, because the economic incentive to develop these new technologies simply disappears. Low prices bring on the Hummers; high prices have consumers clamoring for Toyota Priuses.
The current global economic crisis has consumers wanting neither. So U.S. President Barack Obama is looking for ways to kick the economy, and renewable energy development, into gear.
In his address to the U.S. Congress in February, Obama called on lawmakers “to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.” The question is, Will a cap-and-trade system deliver the desired result—a robust renewable energy program—better than a straight carbon tax?
