Carbon offsets are literally reductions in carbon dioxide and other harmful gases that you pay for.
Who buys carbon offsets?
Mainly the people who buy carbon offsets are large companies. This happens a lot in countries that have limits on how much CO2 emissions one company can have each year. In order to make up for over-stepping their limit, the company buys carbon offsets instead of paying the government or breaking their contract. Also normal people and small business buy too, just to help the environment and reduce their environmental footprint.
What exactly does a carbon offset do?
There are several types of carbon offsets. One way the money for carbon offsets is used is by investing and funding green energy. These investments include solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power and biofuel. This can help offset the cost difference between non-green and green energy sources. Another way is in collecting and burning methane. Although burning methane released CO2, methane has 23 times the greenhouse effect of CO2 and when burned reduces the global warming effect by 96%. You can also "purchase" carbon offsets by making your company or workplace more energy efficient. One of the most popular ways to purchase carbon offsets is in destruction of industrial pollutants (HFCs and PFCs). Because they have a greenhouse effect several thousand times more than CO2 and are easily destroyed, this is a very simple way to buy carbon offsets. Another way that carbon offsets are used is in land-use and land-use change. Forests and soil are natural carbon sinks, and yet deforestation and habitat damage continue. When you buy this type of carbon offset you either directly pay for forest conservation so that the forest stays protected, or you fund projects that replace forest produced products with products that don't need deforestation for production.
Are carbon offsets a good thing?
In many ways carbon offsets are a good thing. They help offset the huge amount of CO2 many big businesses use every year. When talking about the combustion of methane, the destruction of industrial pollutants, and the funding of land-use change, we are talking about immediate changes that work against climate change. And in the world we live in now, everything can't be reduced and changed to green power immediately. In the mean time, why not offset the gases you emit? But some argue that carbon offsets just let companies use as much carbon as they want and then pay it off later. In an ideal world everyone would do both.
sources:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/carbon+offset
http://www.carbonfund.org/
In my opinion, this is a great article . I didn't know anything about the carbon offsets and after I read it, I can see there are companies that really care the environment; they invest their money to help the planet.
ResponderEliminarI agree with patricia this article aport me a lot of thing which i don`t know but i have a problem to understand all the world so i need to use traductor
ResponderEliminarI've never heard talk about the carbon offsets,with that article now I'm more into that and actually I now I know what does it really means and in what consists
ResponderEliminarIt's a good topic to talk about because not many people know what the carbon offsets are and we we should have a basic knowledge about it. The words that uses in you're article are easy (not all, of coure) but you can understand everything through other words and sentences. Good work!
ResponderEliminarafter read it i didn´t know nothing abuut this topic but it is very interesting and all the companyes in the world need to think about it and use it
ResponderEliminarI think a very interesting article, I have never heard of carbon offsets. I think a very good initiative by the companies
ResponderEliminarThis is a very importat article beacuse not all the people know about that and with this you can learn more about the CO2 and the climate change effect
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