My company is also helping “green” the Internet: we host are websites using solar energy. We are called >Solar Energy Host: http://www.solarenergyhost.com

Have you come across this method for reducing your carbon footprint?
http://www.blackle.com/
(more about this site here: http://www.blackle.com/about/ and http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/black_google_wo.php)

I thought it an interesting approach, and wish Google would simply change their homepage to this full-time; it would be interesting to see that “Watt hours saved” number sour.

And, of course, this site is less-than-accessible, but we all know how simply alternative CSS can fix that when needed/desired.

And for the rest of us developers, I see an awful lot of white background colors out there… SitePoint included… :-)

Atg

I take it that your point is this: You get pissed off when companies hide behind carbon credits. Yes. Me too.

It seems to me, though, that we could have avoided half the discussion in this thread if you had just said that rather than attacking the concept of carbon credits. By putting words into the mouths of everyone who buys carbon credits, all you succeed in doing is creating argument for argument’s sake.

Maybe we could have had some discussion on solutions rather than a whole thread dedicated to clarifying its own point.

Rob

Seems to me that if, for example, my business produces 10 tonnes of emissions per year and someone else has a forest reducing emissions by 10 tonnes, I can buy their credits to offset my emissions. This results in zero emissions in principle, but does nothing to reduce total emissions.

In our case, we wanted a hosting provider that used renewable energy to power its servers and offices. When we couldn’t find it we decided the next best thing was to offset our emissions. The end result is the same, providing the offsets are verified and arise from activities that genuinely do result in carbon abatement. This meant only buying abatement certificates that were created from demand side abatement - ie activities that actually reduce energy consumption and that can be measured, audited and verified.

The criticisms of voluntary offsets arose because some abatement activities were derived from tree plantings which can’t be guaranteed to keep carbon sequestered for at least 100 years. However there are many other abatement activities that do. Some of the most effective involve energy efficiency, such as replacing incandescent lights with high efficiency bulbs, and providing water saving shower heads (that reduce energy needed to produce hot water as well as reduce water consumption).

These activities directly result in lower emissions, and the certificates they create can be bought and retired, or traded. These activities promote the uptake of more efficient technologies and practices, and the revenue they provide to the organisations that generate them allows them to introduce new practices, technologies and programs. Having a market mechanism to price the abatement ensures a lower cost.

The whole idea of emissions trading is to create a market where a value is created for reducing carbon emissions. Part of the strong uptake of emissions trading has been because governments have been reluctant to act (in Australia, the states have taken the lead over a reluctant and resistant federal government) and the market has developed a response to the need.

The slight on the European emissions scheme is misinformed. The scheme did start off in a bad way with far too many permits given out at the beginning, resulting in very low prices and hardly any abatement. However this was a pilot scheme and the phase II scheme has much tighter caps and is trading at about AU$25/tonne at the moment. In 2006, 3-5 million tonnes per day were traded, and the forward market out to 2013 is alive and well.

The post by Carlos is also wrong. Global warming is real and has a sound basis in physics. The natural greenhouse effect keeps Earth 30 degrees Celsius warmer than in its absence. Most of this is due to water vapour and CO2. Carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) from burning fossil fuels has increased the level of CO2 from 280 ppm to 380 ppm in the last century and by almost 20 ppm in the last decade. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are like a throttle or amplifier on the natural greenhouse effect. Small changes make big differences. The warming effect from solar cycles and other natural phenomena are much smaller than warming from man-made greenhouse gas emissions. If you need any convincing have a look at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html. The Hadley Centre also has a number of publications if you want a bit more substance, eg http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/pubs/brochures/2005/climate_greenhouse.pdf

Tony from EnergyToday.com.au

You need to separate “Global Warming” from energy usage (carbon-consumption), they are NOT connected.

1. Every planet in our solar system is warming up, that is without question.
2. The sun goes through solar cycles in which we are going through the height of sun spot activity.
3. The earth has gone through and will go through extreme cold and heat ages.
4. The earth is coming off of an ice age (hence it’s warming up), the next will be in a several thousand years.

Now energy consumption has it’s own built in control…it’s called cost to the consumer, the more we use the more we pay. This feel good trendy solution of carbon credits will be it’s discredited in a few years.

It’s good to be froogle and clean, but let’s do it for more practicle reasons…not something like saving “mother earth”.