That old Hollywood line, actually a misquote, has been used for comic relief more than a few times since the Treasure of the Sierra.  And while you may have hoped this would be another, that’s about all the humor………….

 The reason i bring up badges, is because of the CO2 offset badge there on the upper right of this website. It represents that this web site is running carbon neutral by virtue of a carbon offset provided by 4Offsets.com.  4Offsets.com helps individual and businesses offset their CO2 emissions as a way to speed adoption of renewable.  These offsets are based on CO2 offset commodity contracts, that have been ‘retired’ from circulation.  The contracts were awarded to people, projects and companies for efforts that eliminate emissions of greenhouse gases.  The contracts, that might be awarded to a wind farm or for planting and maintaining a forest, are sold to companies who have either a legal or self-imposed madate to reduce their CO2 production.  The theory and the reality, is that this market helps to increase the cashflow on green investments.  As the demand for these offsets increase and the price increases, the amount of money an offset will deliver to green project will increase the investment’s rate of return.  The next part is that the higher rate of return will attract more investment and therefore more wind, solar, and trees, at an increasingly fast pace.

I wrote about these carbon offsets and their use by Aspen Skiing and the concern, expressed by Aspen Ski’s environmental officer, these offsets really are helping speed change.  Following some research, I’ve concluded that while the offset market is less effective at incentivizing green energy, than $100 a barrel oil, it is a sound theory.  Any additional return on investment helps to increase it’s attractiveness.  This is especially true for new, expensive technologies such as solar.  If the market for these offsets increase, causing the price of offsets to generally rise, it will further fuel the march to a sustainable world.

The result of my research was to decide that i should focus my business efforts on fighting the greenhouse crisis and that carbon dioxide offsets are the best option available to ‘kick start’ US society’s shift away from hydrocarbon fuels.  I would like to announce that i have joined with a couple of friends to create a CO2 offset business at www.4Offsets.com.  We currently are running our beta testing, so please let us know what you think.

I’ve been sent this link to this NY Times Article by about 5 or 6 people today and sent it myself to about the same number.  The article is about the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) looking into the carbon offset market, since there is seemingly no standard for what an offset is.  I argue that this is not true.  There are transparent offsets avail for this newly expanding market, serving individuals and business who can’t wait for government to act against global warming.

In the name of disclosure I first need to say: I am about to launch a Carbon Offset business in the next few days, so i have a vested interest in the business.  I have spent a few months researching this business to determine the what sort of service to offer.  I started by trying to build the business by sequestering land from development, in sensitive areas of the world, but found that there was a lack of transparency in that industry and that the competition was mainly creating their own solutions.  Saving an acre of land didn’t necessarily mean the same thing with each vendor, most didn’t say if the fee was to sequester the land forever or just a year.  Even the Nature Conservancy’s “Adopt an Acre” site doesn’t say what it means to adopt an acre.  The same thing can be argued about “planting a tree”.  Sure a tree will trap tons of CO2 over 50-100 years, but only if the tree lives that long.  Is planting a sampling that won’t weigh 100 pounds 5 or 10 years out really offsetting the carbon we burn today?  And again, i want to make offsets easy for people and businesses to use to help change the world.  I’m not looking to create a solution, go plant trees and then create the studies to prove it right.  I want to help people act on their desire to do something about the greenhouse effect.

The solution that i found are exchange traded Carbon Offset commodity contracts.  These are offsets granted to various private and public organizations, via 3rd party certifiers, projects that reduce greenhouse gases.  These groups sell these offsets to other groups such as Utility Companies, looking to offset their CO₂ emissions.   These are the standard, transparent offsets that the FTC says are not available or at least are not widely use. Our business is only uses these exchange trade contract to fill our clients Carbon Offset needs.  I’ll be posting an official announcement when we launch in the next day or two.

I have to admit, while i was probably likely to write up a story on biological production of methane, i.e. Farts, I never imagined it would be for my sustainable energy blog.  If you’ve been paying attention to global warming over the last 10 to 20 years, you’ve probably heard:

1. Methane gas in the atmosphere is 20 times more damaging  greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide.
2. Cattle, other livestock and humans, release a huge percentage of the methane free in the atmosphere.  This gas is produced by digestion and released, intermittently, when the said mammal “breaks wind”.

Now, it’s certainly tough to be all serious about this sort of object, yet it’s a serious global warming issue.  How do we keep this methane out of the atmosphere? Strangely enough, for those familiar with Carbon Dioxide offsets, the best way to dispose of the methane in a greenhouse friendly way is to BURN it.  Yep, burn it and generate CO₂ , is apparently a net gain for the atmosphere, when it comes to global warming.  This “practical solution” ignores an even better idea, either capture and sequester the methane or even better, stop the production.

Now before people accuse me of being a vegetarian or start thinking that i’m planning on outlawing meat, i am not.  The point of this story is some research in Australia to stop the production of methane, during digestion, by livestock.  Yes, stop these animals for producing methane and “releasing” it into the atmosphere.  What makes these researchers think they can change mammals to running “methane” free?  Some sort of genetically engineered life form?

The answer is maybe, but for those who don’t know this, it will rock your world, vis a vis the biological portion.  It turns out that Australia’s most prominent symbol, the kangaroo does not produce methane when it digests it’s food!  Further, the kangaroo digests it’s vegetarian diet more effectively than say Cows, pulling 25% more water out of the plant material, very important in mainly arid/desert country such as Oz.  So scientists are trying to implant bacteria from the kangaroo’s digestive track into cows and sheep, to see if this kangaroo trait can be introduced into traditional livestock animals.

The Kangaroo Story in Aussie Paper