Airlines Carbon Offset?

Question

There are some companies offering an offset per Airline passenger range from $5-$40. How is this carbon offset work? How do they reduce CO2 per passenger?

Answer 1

Imagine you catch your wife/girlfriend in bed with your best friend. A carbon offset is like your friend giving you $10 and everyone agrees everything's OK.

Works the same with airplanes.

Answer 2

Carbon offsets, like global warming, is pure B.S.  No offense, but that is reality

Give thumbs down all you want, but you can't hide from the truth.

Answer 3

Carbon offset is a bunch of political c**p devised by political individuals trying to make a buck off of us.  There is no real science behind this theory at all to back up any of the claims.  How many trees would it take to cover Al Gores jetting across the country pushing this made up carbon stuff?

Did you ever notice the biggest pushers of carbon credits are the worst offenders?  Next time you purchase your airline ticket look and see how much you are paying for carbon credits (taxes).

Just one man’s opinion.

Answer 4

I'll try to keep all editorial comments, both for and against carbon offsets, out of this.

They don't reduce CO2 emissions from the airplane.  The idea of carbon offsets is to voluntarily pay money to fund cleaner but more expensive sources of energy.

I have no idea how the actual numbers work out, but let's say for example's sake that an airline flight emits 2,000 pounds of CO2 per passenger.  That means you personally have a carbon footprint of 2,000 pounds for that flight.  By purchasing a carbon offset, you are voluntarily funding a clean source of energy, such as a wind turbine.  If you pay for 2,000 pounds of carbon offset, that means that you are paying for roughly the difference in cost between wind energy and coal power.  Wind energy is more expensive at this point, but the $40 is representative of the additional cost to save 2,000 pounds worth of carbon emissions from a coal-burning power plant.

Here's my attempt at a simple summary: You take an airline flight.  Airplanes emit carbons.  You want to stay carbon-neutral, so you give money to develop clean power.  The money you give for clean power in theory reduces the demand for "dirty" power.  There is no alternate to airplane emissions right now, so to stay carbon-neutral, you pay money to reduce coal power plant emissions to offset the carbon footprint of your airline flight.  Make sense?  Sort of?

Answer 5

Its investing money in cleaner energy to make up for polluting.

The thing is that all Boeing aircraft from the 747 and higher get over 50mpg per person, they are quite fuel efficient. Some of the newest version with low specific fuel consumptions can get nearly 80mpg per person, so they can at times outperform even hybrids. Its really just seems like they pollute alot because the do burn massive amounts of fuel, but divided by the number of passengers its actually very efficient.

Answer 6

Its nothing more than planting a few trees.  Trees breath CO2 in and help scrub it from the air.  The problem is, when they die they decay and that CO2 is simply released back into the air.  Its more of a temporary storage tank than an actual offset.