FEATURE - US Group Aims to Help Shipping Industry go 'Green'
Date: 17-Nov-06
Country: US
Author: Timothy Gardner
That could change after Maryland-based nonprofit Carbonfund.org Thursday launched a product that allows Beckstrom and other emission-conscious customers to reduce the US shipping industry's contribution to global warming.
International and emerging US efforts to reduce greenhouse gas output have yet to target emissions from transport, the second-largest source of the gases.
US shipping emits 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, more than all of Canada's output, according to Dr. Scott Matthews, a shipping expert at Carnegie Mellon University who helped form Carbonfund.org's program.
Most scientists link greenhouse gases emitted from industry and transportation sources to global warming which could lead to more floods, storms and heat waves.
Carbonfund.org claims to "offset" -- or neutralize -- emissions from fuels burned during domestic shipping by funding solar and wind energy and the planting of trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
It works like this: Offset customers pay surcharges on their deliveries of a few cents to 50 cents which represent the amount of greenhouse gas emitted during of the shipping of their package. The extra money funds emissions cuts from the green projects that would not have occurred otherwise.
WALKING THE TALK
Nobody argues that carbon offsets by themselves will slow output of greenhouses gases in the United States, the world's top polluter. And they will not substitute for a federal mandatory plan for curbing emissions, which most other developed nations have.
But US buyers say offsets offer at least a personal sense of taking action in a country where President George W. Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, an international agreement aimed at stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Advocates say offsets could even offer a chance for renewable power to compete with power from coal, the fuel that emits the most carbon dioxide.
"If I'm concerned about global warming then I need to hold myself to a higher standard. I need to walk the talk," Beckstrom, a Palo Alto, California, venture capitalist and environmental activist, told Reuters by telephone.
In fact, Beckstrom has used other Carbonfund.org offset products for home electricity and personal transportation to neutralize his family's entire 15-year carbon footprint. He paid US$7,500 to buy about 1,500 tonnes of emissions.
Carbonfund.org has signed up four small companies so far including Better World Books and sports outfitter Evogear.
Eric Carlson, Carbonfund.org's founder, said the nonprofit organization was little more than a Web site and a dream until 18 months ago. But it has logged more than 100,000 tonnes of total carbon dioxide offsets, up ten-fold since the start of the year, and Carlson expects a similar rate of growth next year.
Some critics say planting trees is an unreliable method of offsetting emissions because trees take years to absorb carbon. But it is an accepted method of cutting emissions in the Chicago Climate Exchange and other greenhouse gas-reduction programs. Carlson's group plants up to three times more trees per tonne of emissions than other offset programs.
Carlson sees the potential of offsets not in the number of people who might eventually buy them, but in the extent to which buyers help fund wind and solar power to become competitive with electricity from coal. When that happens, alternative fuels, which currently provide only tiny amounts of power, could grow at faster rates, he said.
