Re: Carbon Offsets - The Great Debate

Good point, let me elaborate on the mechanism...

  REC's, SREC's, Green-Tags, Carbon Credits, et. al.  Lots of different names, lots of fine distinctions...  I'll just refer to the real ones as REC's

  The only real consumer of REC's are the big coal fired polluters.  Specifically, the coal fired power plants, and a very few others.  The only reason for them to demand REC's is to *offset* the fines and  taxes for the pollution they _must_ emit to provide the power they _must_ provide.

  That's really it.  No one else benefits by "buying" REC's, because they cannot consume them, only accumulate them.  Here's the rub, I'm talking pure economics.

  The whole point of REC's is to provide $$$ incentives to the polluters to clean up their acts either by fining them for the CO2, SOx, NOx, Hg, etc...  Or, by incenting them to send that $$$ out to innovators to compensate them for investing in *non-competitive* alternatives, i.e. PV.

  It's human nature to but the cheapest product that does the job, that's coal fired electricity, or nuclear, or hydro, etc, and to exploit those as much as possible.  REC's are used to elaborate the long term consequences.

  You spent premium $$$ to buy PV to get your kWh's. That's cool!  The fair thing to do is for you to be able to obtain your kWh's at the same price as anyone else who buys the coal fired kWh's...

  Your installer or utility can "certify" your kWh's are really coming from PV, and then you could sell them on the open market as negotiable commodities... But that's too much trouble! 

  Too big a pain for the big polluters.  They don't want to account for thousands of $15-$20 REC's they want a few tens of $20,000 & bigger ones.  The local utilities need their itemized profits from each & every home & business, but they're regulated.  So what they do is take the apportioned funds and grudgingly hand them out.

  It's not *fraud* as much as expedience.  The *State* says a REC is
worth $0.02 regardless; clearly an arbitrary and useless value...  The
*Market* says a REC is worth $0.25, but _only_ if certified.  If is
costs $0.03 to certify a REC, the the State value is *zero* but the market value is still $0.22.

  The problem you've identified is that the utilities are buying an _uncertified_ commodity for pennies on the dollar, and because they're uncertified they can't resell them, they're simply vapor!  But since they have a pool of apportioned $$$ it doesn't really affect their bottom line.  They're not making the $0.22, they're letting it rot on the last mile.

  Why are the RECS worth more than the energy???  Because they are only  applied against the over-utilization of the "cheapest" generation I mentioned above.  That's where the fines are; since the local utilities are not the ones being fined, they lack incentive to do anything.

 That's the economic landscape.  There are many more details, but that's the big picture.

  You've made it clear that the economics are not the reason for your conservation practices.  That's wonderful!  You're doing what's right because it's right and because you're able.  Thank you!

  If we look at the "crunchy green" aspects of Green-Tags, I'll call them GT's, then the situation is both simpler and more complex.

  Lots of folks want to *buy* GT's because they want to improve the human condition.  That is a noble purpose, but as you point out, is a golden opportunity for fraud & abuse.  As long as the casual buyer understands that they're buying adult equivalent of baseball cards, it's hard for me to get too worked up, but keep reading...

   I think you indicated that you've been buying 8 units / month...  I assumed you meant REC's and guessed $1600/mo.  That's good reason for you yo be concerned about where the $$$ is going.  You want it to do some good, not just improve the utility's bottom line.

  I really hate it when someone like you gets ripped off!  It makes my life so much harder!!!  I'm trying to raise funds & awareness for real solar energy, and every time someone reports fraud and implicates "alternative energy" in the scam, my blood pressure goes nuts!  I don't want to do damage control; I want to build Concentrating Solar Collectors, and Organic Rankine Cycle engines.  (hint hint -  oops not yet, but I'm thinking about it... )

  You also have to admit that there's a certain amount of conspicuous consumption going on the the GT market too.  And that's OK, it's good even.  I love to poke the establishment in the eye when they deserve it.  Like buying clothing made from 100% hemp fiber... It's a great fiber and it's got that nice shock value.  But mostly it's a good fiber! (I don't get out much so the shock value is really limited in my case.)

  So what am I doing?  Look back to an earlier post... Wanna buy a Carbon Offset?  I decided to start selling them... cheap! 

  I'm selling 10 pound "Electronic Certificate of Offset - CO2" for about 2.5 cents each.   Actually the fine print clearly states that these are nothing more than "link exchanges* on a web site...  But it's all about the appearance, isn't it ???  Then I thought about it... People will buy anything so I'll sell them as much as they want... I'm being honest, it's about advertising... it's not even good advertising, and I do promise that I will attribute the offset to the person that buys it...  But that's all I can do right now.

  I'm being at least as honest as some of the sites that are promising to plant 100 trees somewhere in NW Canada for $5.00... What are they describing?  They're going to sponsor a couple of college kids that want to hike the Cascades next summer and they're going to ask the "Fresh Air Fund" for 10,000 pine seedlings for each kid...  4-5 days with a stick & trays of trees... That's OK too, I'm a true believer in the free market.

  The only thing I'm going to add here is that you should have taken the $$$ the utility was offering for the REC's!  Even if you didn't need it.  Then you'd have been counted.  Then again, it sounds like the utility is aware of you