Climate Neutral Driving Gets in Gear

So, you're a typical driver. You haven't yet gone the hybrid route (or, at least, your hybrid is back-ordered, still months away) but you'd like to lessen the environmental load of your daily commute, your family vacation, and all the other time you spend behind the wheel.

Welcome to the world of climate-neutral driving. A cottage industry of companies seems to be springing up around helping us “drive green” by buying “green tags” -- also known as “tradable renewable energy certificates” or “renewable energy credits” (the latter referred to as “RECs” -- just what you want your car to be involved in).

By whatever name, they’re both simple and not-so-simple to understand. Consider this explanation from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, one of the pioneers in the field:

Green Tags represent the real savings in carbon dioxide and other pollutants that occur when green power replaces burning fossil fuel.

Got that? I didn’t think so.

The simplest explanation I can muster is that when you buy green tags, you’re paying a electricity generator to put a certain amount of renewable energy (usually from wind, sometimes from solar or biomass) into the grid, thereby reducing the need for some dirty power plant to produce the same amount of juice from coal or natural gas or nukes.

Buying green tags has a couple of other benefits besides reducing the need for fossil-fuel electricity. It helps to stimulate markets for renewable energy, and it allows individuals, businesses, and others to “offset” their climate emissions -- from electricity, driving, and other activities.

Hence, the new great business opportunity: Make everything climate neutral.

And, it seems, nearly anything can be. The 2002 Olympic Winter Games were the first international world class event to eliminate their climate impact through offsets. The Saunders Hotel Group has created climate neutral accommodations at the Lenox and Copley Square hotels in Boston. The Dave Matthews Band created the first climate neutral rock tour. In Oregon, Jiffy Lube worked with the Climate Neutral Network to offer drivers the choice to travel climate-neutral between oil changes through a partnership with employees at Nike and the City of Portland. There’s climate-neutral web hosting. And Interface, Inc., the sustainably minded carpet company, now has a Cool Carpet floorcovering.

So, what about your driving? There are several companies eager to sell you the right to neutralize the climate impact of even the most gas-guzzling vehicle. But caveat emptor: They vary widely in cost -- and what you get for the money.

I just test-drove five sites, and here’s my report, based on my own driving habits, which total (a mere) 6,000 miles a year in a convertible that averages (a pathetic) 22 miles per gallon:

Certified Clean Car, just launched this week, asked me for my car’s year, make, model, and annual mileage. It quickly calculated that my driving would generate 5,577 pounds of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning 286 gallons of gasoline -- about 2.5 metric tons. That makes me a “Level 1” driver -- the lowest impact -- and would cost me $34.99 to offset a year’s worth of driving -- about $14 per metric ton. An additional click allows me to make the purchase via credit card of PayPal.

DrivingGreen has a similar year-make-model interface, but yields a somewhat different result. According to DrivingGreen, my vehicle use produces 2 metric tons, or 4,409 pounds, of CO2. Neutralizing those emissions would cost a mere $16 -- just $8 per ton. With your offset, you also get a license plate frame (“This vehicle is greenhouse gas neutral.”) and a cool t-shirt (pictured here) promoting your good deed . . . and the company.

Bonneville Environmental Foundation offers a calculator that tells me that I'd need 3.8 green tags representing my 5,336 pounds of CO2 emissions to offset my driving -- a cost of $80, equivalent to about $30 a ton (though it does allow me to pay $6.67 a month, thereby easing the sting).

NativeEnergy allows you to offset your driving for $12 per ton. It calculated that my driving would require 5,328 pounds to offset, or 2.4 metric tons -- about $30 worth. With that purchase, I'd get a certificate, a quarterly newsletter, and “the personal satisfaction of helping build new wind farms and reducing carbon dioxide pollution.”

ETA Roadside Rescue, which appears to be the U.K.’s equivalent to AAA, offers a climate-neutral driving service, if you don’t mind paying for your CO2 pounds in, well, pounds. The cost is £2.80 per 1,000 miles -- in my case, £16.80 or about $30.40. For that, you get a certificate.

Why the differences? First of all, there’s no clear agreement on the number of pounds of CO2 emissions per gallon of gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration puts the number at 19.564 pounds of carbon dioxide produced per gallon of gasoline used, but a quick web scan found estimates ranging from 19 pounds to 26 pounds per gallon.

Beyond that, different types of offsets produce different results. For example, DrivingGreen states that:

Your purchase will support projects that reduce methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in agriculture. Methane and nitrous oxide are two very powerful greenhouse gases, more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) in terms of global warming. DrivingGreen’s GHG emission reduction projects are located throughout the United States and Canada.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more potent in global warming than carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide is 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

In other words, reducing 1 tonne of methane has the same positive effect as reducing 21 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Reducing 1 tonne of nitrous oxide has the same positive effect as reducing 310 tonnes of carbon dioxide. These projects also promote cleaner air and water.

You should also make sure that the offset you're buying is certified by the Center for Resource Solutions, whose Green-e logo represents that the offset provider provides transparency and other disclosure about the source of the offsets -- basically, that's its doing what it says it is. All of the services mentioned here, except for DrivingGreen, mention Green-e certification on their Web sites.

Of course, there's the larger idea of whether we can drive our way to environmental health simply by buying offsets. As you likely know, the idea is to drive as little as possible, then offset the miles you must drive. But few of the sites mention that.

In the end, it may all boil down to what you are willing to pay -- and what makes you feel good. Native Energy, for example, is another of the pioneers in this field and its offsets help address social as well as environmental goals. The company already helped build a Native American-owned and operated wind turbine – the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Wind Turbine Project, a single 750kW wind turbine demonstration project. Now it's working on building a full-scale, 10-megawatt wind farm on the Rosebud Reservation -- the first large-scale Native American-owned and operated wind farm in the U.S.

Ah, but then again, did I mention DrivingGreen’s really cool t-shirt?

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June 3, 2005 in Climate Change, Green Marketing | Permalink

Comments

Great job. I linked back to this post on my site, dirtygreek.org

Posted by: george | Jun 3, 2005 1:31:48 PM

do you know about www.terrapass.com ?

Posted by: Neil Drobny | Jun 4, 2005 6:03:07 AM

I have a TerraPass for my car. I wasn't aware of these other carbon offset web services.

Posted by: John Hritz | Jun 6, 2005 12:41:11 PM

Another one to add to the list: www.offsetters.com.

A crucial differentiator between these services is the quality of the offsets they invest in. Offsetters does a good job of qualifying and certifying that their offsets are invested in high-impact, measurable projects. Not sure about the others.

Posted by: Dave | Oct 9, 2005 1:30:43 AM

Is anyone offering carbon offseting at the gasoline pump? You could go to the pump and see Regular, Premium, Carbon Offset.

Based on the prices at terrapass.com, it would only be $.10 per gallon of gasoline. At $3.00 a gallon, what is an extra $.10? Easier to do that, than signing up at a website for a year. The pump opperators would likely go for it if they could get $.01 of the $.10.

Is there anyone out there that does this already?

Posted by: MH | Jun 2, 2006 2:58:55 PM

GasDandy is an easy-to-use tool that tracks a vehicle’s mileage and maintenance information, providing data that can be used for both business and personal purposes. By making these figures readily available, the program also gives the consumer the opportunity to save money and to proactively identify problems that can shorten the life of their vehicle(s). Download a free trial version of GasDandy today at http://www.gasdandy.com

Posted by: Dandy | Aug 20, 2007 1:02:28 PM

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