Heather,
Whether the CO2 reduction occurs inside a companies gates or outside is irrelevant to the planet. Carbon offsets enable a person, company or country to reduce their carbon footprint, and impact on climate change, in the fastest, most efficient way.
If Yahoo! used to pay $6.00 to reduce a ton of CO2 with offsets, and now, because of public pressure, are paying $15.00 to reduce a ton inside their gates (server farms), you have not helped the planet any more but have made the cost significantly higher. Conversely, if Yahoo! has found internal reductions for $4.00, of course they should pursue them, and that is hardly a rejection of carbon offsets. Indeed, the offsets they used to buy probably cost the project developer $4.00 which they sold for $6.00 to make it profitable.
If you're into solving climate change, tear down your thinking boundaries. You offset things every day. You buy food from a grocery store because it would cost you too much to make it yourself. Your clothes are (likely) made overseas because it is too expensive in the US. Your computer, which you don't consider an indulgence, is built elsewhere, all offset with your dollars because it is more efficient to solve that problem.
Let's not forget the benefits of carbon offsets. Supporting development and technology transfer, along with jobs and investment, in the developing world. Building wind farms in struggling farming communities, bringing investment, expertise and diversity to crop-based economies and keeping high skilled people in rural areas. And doing so while fighting climate change in the most effective way possible.
If you are in favor of cap-and-trade legislation, and you should be, you are in favor of carbon offsets. The "trade" in cap-and-trade means offsets; one group increases while another decreases and a trade is made, exactly what occurs with offsets.
Eric
I am the worst kind of journalist in one very specific way: I believe the best of people unless shown that I should do otherwise. I really have to concentrate hard keeping my skepticism meter operating at full strength.
But there is one topic that has continued to perplex and irk me over my two years of cover green technology at the GreenTech Pastures blog, and that is the whole carbon credits marketplace.
I can’t tell you how many press releases, proclamations and breathless PR pitches I have received about companies that have gone 100 PERCENT CARBON-NEUTRAL! only to find that the only way that said company has been able to get there is buying scads of carbon offsets to compensate for its electricity consumption. Don’t get be wrong, I like the idea that your company is funding work on clean technology, or a solar installation, or a wind farm or some other renewable energy scheme. I like the carbon credit marketplace idea. But let’s be real: By simply going out and throwing money at a carbon offset provider, you really say that your company is carbon-neutral? I think not.
So, I almost screamed with joy when Yahoo! announced late in June on one of its corporate blogs that it plans to stop buying carbon offsets for its operations and instead will put that money into real honest to goodness energy reduction projects within its data centers. Its goal is to reduce the “carbon intensity” of its data centers by a minimum of 40 percent between now and 2014. Especially when it comes to a company like Yahoo!, which literally makes its living off its data centers, this just seems like a much more reasonable approach. I hope that other enterprises follow its lead and get more serious about overhauling their existing data center facilities.
There is one thing that I worry about a bit: If fewer companies buy carbon credits, will this negatively impact funding for renewable energy sources? I hope not, but I fear so.
