A Solution for your Climate Change-Inducing Vacation Plans
By: 2019 DC Fellow Emily Shorin
Are you worried about planning your next vacation or feeling guilty about that Labor Day weekend getaway? Travel often comes along with a large environmental footprint. Luckily, there is an easy and affordable way to negate our climate impact: carbon offsets. When traveling, anyone who cares about the environment should consider purchasing carbon offsets to reduce the impact of their journey.
Air travel, in particular, has a large carbon footprint relative to the emissions from our daily routines. A one-way cross-country flight releases about the same amount of greenhouse gases as a month’s worth of typical human activities. Globally, air travel keeps rising and is expected to double by 2035. Moreover, while electric vehicles have started to become commonplace, renewably-fueled airplanes are still a pipe dream. All of this is cause for climate-related concern.
Luckily, there is a way to negate the impact of our air travel without actually skipping vacation entirely: carbon offsets. A carbon offset represents a verified ton of CO2 (or CO2-equivalent) that is either prevented from being emitted or pulled directly from the atmosphere. Since carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants that have global climate impacts regardless of injection point, projects that create carbon offsets can be located anywhere on earth and have the same effect.
National Geographic outlines fifty options for conscientious travelers to reduce their environmental footprint, including cheap and easy options like “pack light” and “bring a reusable shopping bag.” Flying, which produces substantial greenhouse gas emissions, is often the only realistic option for long-distance travel. That said, if anyone knows how to apparate, fly on a broomstick, or travel via floo powder, please let me know!
Fortunately, there is an entire industry that exists to financially connect individuals and companies with real-life projects that reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. These projects could be anything from reforestation to capturing methane from cows; anything that reduces greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can qualify. Funding these projects through the purchase of carbon offsets is often the only way to negate our unavoidable emissions. While businesses and government labs innovate long-term strategies to systematically reduce global emissions, purchasing carbon offsets is the only short-term strategy for mitigating the unavoidable climate effects of our travel.
Let us walk through a popular carbon offset example: Gas capture from landfills. When the trash is dumped at a landfill, it starts to decompose into a variety of gases, the most prominent of which is methane (more on this process). Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, with a negative impact approximately 24 times higher per ton than carbon dioxide. Note: landfill gas has a similar composition to natural gas, which is found in geologic deposits and used as fuel for electric power plants.
Instead of letting this gas float into the atmosphere, landfills can install a system to capture the methane, either simply burning it, which creates carbon dioxide and water, or using the burning process to fuel an electricity-generating turbine, further reducing the environmental impact. Today, the economics of these investments are not usually favorable enough to incentive widespread adoption. Gas capture equipment is expensive, simply burning the fuel produces no profit, and while using the gas to make electricity brings in revenue, natural gas is an abundant and cheaper alternative.
Carbon offset verification addresses three main concerns about the validity of each credit: additionality, leakage, and permanence. In many cases, these important projects only materialize if they receive revenue from the sale of carbon offsets. If this is the case, then the project is considered additional. The carbon offsets project is permanent if the emissions reductions is irreversible. For example, this would not be the case if the landfill simply captured the gas and released it at a later date. And finally, leakage, which is the concept that the project could subsequently increase emissions somewhere else, such that there is no net-impact on global emissions. Verification agencies such as the Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard have developed stringent documentation processes and methodologies to ensure that projects lead to additional and permanent emissions reductions, and prevent leakage of emissions to somewhere else.
With all of the verification needed to create a carbon offset, you might think that these financial products are only for earth-loving billionaires. In reality, carbon offsets are less expensive than most people expect. In fact, you may have indirectly purchased them already. Just last year, Delta announced that it would offset its emissions on travel into and out of seven major airports, and Lyft announced that it would purchase carbon offsets to cover all of its rides. Terrapass, a popular carbon offset broker sells offsets to individuals at a price of just $4.99 per 1,000 pounds of carbon emissions. For context, a typical round trip flight from New York to San Francisco results in just under 2,000 pounds of emissions or less than $10 of carbon offsets. In 2017, American adults took on average 2.5 trips via airplane, but only 10% of flyers purchased a voluntary carbon offset at least once during the same period.
Purchasing carbon offsets is an easy, low-cost way to reduce unavoidable emissions in the short-term. At a minimum, all travelers who care about the environment should understand the global impact of their air travel and consider purchasing carbon offsets to negate the resulting emissions.
