Comments on: How much should I spend for my Indulgences: Voluntary Carbon Offset Pricing

By: Pete G

Pete G — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:04:57 +0000

On these blogs there are so many posts attacking carbon offsetting and renouncing its right to exist. The fact is, as long as the offsets are verified and additional, they add perfectly well to the efforts against climate change. It is true that people should not view them as the whole solution, and it is also true that they are far from perfect in terms of companies actually reducing their own emissions, but, they do reduce overall world emissions. They are better than nothing. While we strive to get governments to set up more renewable energy systems and stricter targets – which may take a long time – offsets allow us a chance to at least do something.

By: Robby

Robby — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:42:43 +0000

Well Joseph is a little biased because he’s a recent employee with Village Green! Thanks for the plug Joe. (We’re still teaching him about blog comment etiquette).
I’m the co-founder of Village Green, so I thought I’d just add my two cents.
Village Green focuses on Renewable Energy Certificates, not carbon offsets. In the REC world, higher prices definitely cause higher prices. As Joe mentions, the highest quality RECs come from compliance markets. Compliance market REC are more expensive because regulated entities must own/buy them – this creates supply shortage, which leads to price increase over time.
What Village Green does is enable the voluntary market to interact with the compliance market. When voluntary purchasers buy RECs from compliance markets, they are essentially buying RECs away from utilities. The utilities still need to meet their quotas, so they must find new renewable power.
They can do this by entering into new power purchase agreements for projects under development, thus giving those projects the necessary financing to be built, or they can build new projects themselves.
The point is, this all leads to more renewable energy.
Carbon Offsets address a symptom of our energy problem – carbon dioxide emissions. Renewable Energy Certificates are part of the solution to the problem – generating more power with renewables, and less with polluting sources like fossil fuels.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:50:07 +0000

Yea, the integrity of the carbon offsets market definitely needs to be improved. Coal power generators love carbon offsetting because it has no effect on them in the least. Its just a band-aid instead of tackling the real issue: We need more renewable power, and faster than any dept. of energy mandate is forcing our electric utilities.
Renewable Energy Certificates are the way to go, as long as they come from compliance markets where the utility is forced to provide a certain percentage of their power from renewable generators. If they don’t come from compliance markets, that doesn’t force the utility to buy more green power.
I was surprised to see that is no third party verification (green-e, etc) that distinguishes between compliance markets and non-compliance markets.
When I looked into REC providers, only one company was actually doing this and making this exact distinction. Village Green Energy from San Francisco ONLY sells compliance market RECs. Its nice to see that someone is adding credibility and integrity to the voluntary carbon offsetting market!!