Carbon offsets or conscience savers?

On the Internet, erasing your role in climate change seems as easy as ordering a DVD 8212; and cheaper than a cup of coffee a day.

On the Internet, erasing your role in climate change seems as easy as ordering a DVD 8212; and cheaper than a cup of coffee a day. With a click, a credit card and 99, visitors can pay a nonprofit group, Carbonfund.org, to 8220;offset8221; a year8217;s worth of greenhouse-gas emissions. Whatever the customer put into the atmosphere 8212; by flying, driving, using electricity 8212; the site promises to cancel out, by funding projects that reduce pollutants.

Sites such as this one, offering absolution from the modern nag of climate guilt, have created a 55 million industry that once would have been beyond the greenest of imaginations. The market for 8220;voluntary carbon offsets8221; now encompasses dozens of sellers and thousands of buyers, including individuals and corporations.

But in some cases, these customers may be buying good feelings and little else. A closer look reveals an unregulated market in which some improvements bought by customers are only estimated, extrapolated, hoped-for or nil. Some offsets support projects that would have gone forward anyway. Others deliver results difficult to measure.

Carbonfund.org, for example, has advertised offsets that finance wind farms and tree-planting projects. But some wind farms said the donations haven8217;t led to anything new. And the benefits from some tree projects were unclear enough that Carbonfund.org no longer uses them to back offsets.

8220;People can feel very comfortable that they8217;re reducing their carbon footprint8221; by buying Carbonfund.org offsets, its Executive Director Eric Carlson said.

Many offset sellers do seem to deliver measurable cuts to pollution. One Vermont company, for instance, has been praised for offering customers a chance to support projects in development, effectively guaranteeing positive future impact.

Critics say that offset sellers usually have good motives. But the market is confusing enough that, this month, the Federal Trade Commission said it would look into whether consumers are being adequately protected.

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The offset is among the most unusual of commodities. Its substance is intangible, the absence of something. Some pollution would have existed, somewhere, sometime, the seller says, but now it won8217;t.

But the market for the product grew by 80 per cent in 2006 alone.

Large corporations have bought offsets by the millions. Last month, one utility, American Electric Power, agreed to offset about 4.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by paying for projects that reduce methane 8212; a powerful pollutant 8212; seeping from farm manure.

For individual consumers, an offset can be a tempting alternative to a radical lifestyle makeover. People concerned about climate change could sell their cars and cover their roofs with solar panels. Or, on an offset site, they could become 8220;carbon neutral8221; with a click.

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8220;That means I . . . keep my current gas-guzzling car,8221; said Brian Schilling, an Arlington writer who paid the company TerraPass about 108 to offset his home and auto for a year, 8220;and make up for it some other way.8221;

But scientists and academic researchers have begun to warn consumers that it8217;s not that simple.