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Interesting Facts about Carbon Offsets
- $5 billion: The amount of money invested in the market for carbon offsets, in 2006.
- 25 percent: Percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions the United States is responsible for, although the U.S. has only 4.5 percent of the world’s population.
- 1 metric tonne: Carbon equal to 1,000 kilograms or 2,205 U.S. pounds. 1 U.S. ton equals 0.91 metric tonnes.
- $1-20: Dollars per tonne of carbon spent on carbon credits in the voluntary carbon trading market.
- 100 million: Tonnes of CO2 emissions cut this year on the voluntary carbon offset market.
- 1 tonne: Carbon dioxide that would fill the average family home; so most households produce carbon dioxide equivalent to 15 times the size of their home each year. Or put another way, one ton of CO2 correlates to the volume of a swimming pool, 10 meters wide, 25 meters long and 2 meters deep.
- 1989: The year the first carbon offset project was launched, to mitigate against construction of a new 183 megawatt coal-fired power plant in Connecticut. It entailed planting 50 million non-native pine and eucalyptus trees on some 40,000 small farm holdings in the Western Highlands region of Guatemala. (12 years on farmers were still not properly paid for their tree planting).
- 10: The number of carbon offset projects listed on Gold Standard Project Registry, of which six have been validated by an UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).
- 3000 tonnes: Carbon offset in the first 20 months after British Airways announced a scheme where passengers could offset their share of the carbon produced by any flight. Only 3000 out of the estimated 27 million tonnes was offset (less than the carbon dispersed by a single day of its flights between London and New York).
Sources: New Scientist, Worldwatch Institute, Financial Times, New Internationalist, Gold Standard, Alternet, Energy for Sustainable Development Bulgaria, The Guardian
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