carbon offsets

Duke Energy power plant (not in North Carolina, sorry) photo by Mike Baird.

Duke Energy has been doing a lot lately to try to green its image: expanding its wind development, installing solar panels across North Carolina, talking up transitioning to a low carbon economy. However the fact remains ...

Photo courtesy elisfanclub on flickr

O.K. perhaps it's not news to you, and instead just a bit more evidence of man's effect on climate. Eons of air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice reveal how carbon dioxide ups and downs are in sync with rising and falling Earth temperatures, according to research presented in the journal Nature Geoscience - and hypothesizes how the recent surge of CO2 emissions has thrown that system, known as a feedback mechanism, out of whack.

Researcher Richard Zeebe measured CO2 in the air pockets in layers of Antarctic ice and found that amounts waxed and waned with known periods of cooling and warming on Earth. In the past C...

Earthrace, billed as "the world's fastest, coolest and greenest powerboat" launches today, seeking to break the world record for circumnavigation in a power boat. Over two years have passed since Earthrace announced their intention to break the record in "one of the most eco-friendly boats ever made". Two years during which even the mainstream experienced intense sensitization to green issues. Will this newly informed public still be enthralled by the excitement of seeing green technology pushed to its limits, or will the question be: "is that the flatten-the-rainforest biodiesel or the take-food-from...

(A Few Good Men: CLIMACT’s Pascal Vermeulen, Dimitri Mertens and Hugues de Meulemeester)

Those following the carbon offset market closely might be wondering about the differences in missions and motives between providers who are in it for profit, versus the ones who have gone the non-profit route.

Today Carbon Catalog, the resource that offers a directory and fair glance at the world’s offset providers selling online, interviews the for-profit Belgian-based provider CLIMA...

The announcement last month that ClimateCare had been bought by JP Morgan signaled the Wild-West climate offset business has reached a milestone - it's now a business big enough ($9.4 billion in offsets traded last year) for the traditional financial services industry to get involved. Another milestone: Kyoto CDM offset projects now number over 1,000 and have offset 135 million tonnes of CO2 (the picture is of a Cambodian cook stove efficiency project). It may be a while before t...