Shopping for carbon credits

Now of course the next ethical step would be to reduce our emissions at their source. And there's so much we could do, from changing more light bulbs to installing solar panels. But frankly, like most other Americans, we're not up to that level of sacrifice. So on to the purchase of offsets to atone for those 24 tons.

How much would I have to pay? That turned out to depend on what I wanted to spend. A recent survey of carbon-offset prices found the price of a ton, or "credit," at anywhere from $5 to $50. I entered my 24 tons on the calculator of Native Energy, figuring if it's good enough for Gore, it's good enough for me. It said I could absolve my carbon sins for just $12 a ton, in payments of $24 per month.

On the other hand, I'd recently heard of an even cheaper and more convenient offset project offered by my utility, Pacific Gas & Electric. Starting June 28, through its new Climate Smart program, I could sign up to pay between $4 and $5 a month to offset my family's electricity use.

I was really curious about this one. It's the first utility-sponsored, customer-conscience-cleaning offset program, with an all-but-captive audience of about 5 million customers. And it has gotten such good reception -- including an EPA award for its director -- that other power companies might well follow suit, making them the biggest offset market of all.

But was it just green washing? PG&E, after all, is under heavy pressure in its eco-savvy headquarters city, San Francisco, for not moving fast enough to switch to renewable energy. Elsewhere, power firms are also under the gun. Nationally, they're responsible for 40 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. And, now, through their billing systems, they can get out the word to scores of millions of Americans about the best ways to reduce them.

That's an instant edge in a highly competitive industry, and PG&E is making the most of it. The company expects to collect $20 million, over three years, from the 5 percent of clients it predicts will sign up to buy the offsets, says PG&E's director of environmental policy, Wendy Pulling. In the meantime, it will spend another $16 million to administer and market the program. That extra money will come from a rate increase, averaging 2 to 3 cents a month, approved by California regulators. Which means even PG&E's customers who won't buy offsets will pay to advertise them.

The P.R. to date has been quite dramatic. The program's stated goal is to take "two million tons of carbon dioxide from the air ... the equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road for one year."

How will it do that? The short answer is no one knows. PG&E is requiring that its offsets be registered and certified with a nonprofit agency called the California Climate Action Registry. The registry in turn requires projects to meet detailed standards and to be certified by a third-party agency. So far not one project had qualified.

Last December, however, PG&E spokesman Keely Wachs announced that customers' dollars would initially be invested in California forests. Indeed, the project closest to meeting the registry's standard involves selling credits from the 2,100-acre van Eck Forest in Northern California's Humboldt County. Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust, which is managing that project, predicted it will be certified in August. (Pelosi and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have already purchased credits from the van Eck Forest, trusting the certification will come.)

As Wayburn explained, the van Eck Forest, unlike many others in the area, is managed in a sustainable manner, with only selective cutting of trees for timber. Foresters have calculated how many tons of carbon are stored through this management style, compared with what would have happened with more aggressive logging. Each of these tons, and thousands more tons the trust predicts will be stored in the future, can be represented as credits and sold. Wachs said that PG&E customers will "own" credits they buy from the utility. On paper, customers are buying into a project -- a sustainable forest -- that prevents carbon emissions.

This sounds good. But I decided to give it a closer look. I tracked down Charles Michler, an advisor to the Fred M. van Eck Forest Foundation, based at Purdue University in Indiana. Michler told me the forest's current sustainable management is owed to a conservation easement placed on the property back in 2001.

A conservation easement means that a property's owners have been paid for their agreement not to develop the land, a stipulation that stays with the land title, forever. But this easement went further, Michler said, including what he called "very strict" guidelines for conservation. In other words, my payments to PG&E for carbon credits weren't going to plant or protect any trees in the van Eck Forest; that had all already been arranged. Indeed, the foundation board was still deciding what to do with the PG&E money if it came through. One possible use, Michler speculated, might be to fund another building for the forestry department at Purdue -- a likely disappointment for PG&E customers who think their money will be used to plant redwoods.

I went back to Wayburn, in charge of the forest's carbon-selling program, to ask what gives. She spun an analogy for me, comparing buying carbon credits from the van Eck trees to buying organic fruit. The farmer has already taken the risk of using organic methods, she said, hoping that enough buyers will support his choice. You, as the buyer, are not paying for the actual methods as much as sending a signal that you support the organic market.

On the other hand, if you buy organic fruit, you also presumably get something you can eat. And how, I was left wondering, could this equal taking 350,000 cars off the road? I decided not to sign up for the PG&E program.

Next page: Here's what I'm planning to do