Going deep on voluntary carbon markets

Get the scoop on the carbon industry this January

For those who are looking for a couple of days of in-depth commentary and analysis on the voluntary carbon markets, I thought I’d mention that I’ll be speaking at the Voluntary Carbon Markets USA conference on Jan 22nd and 23rd , 2009. Well, I’ll be on a panel speaking about how companies are using carbon offsets. The keynote speaker is Hunter Lovins, a noted author and researcher, and the agenda features notables from all...

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Holiday gift selection now online

Lots of energy-saving and environmentally-friendly gifts are now available at terrapass.com.

Well, it’s not quite Thanksgiving but around TerraPass we’re already seeing people buying gifts for the holidays. So we thought this would be a fine time to introduce our Second! Annual! TerraPass! Holiday Gift Selection. Please check it out. We’ve done our best to put together a range of gift ideas, at a range of price points. As you would expect, we’re mostly interested in gifts that reduce carbon emissions, though this year we’ve...

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Welcome to The TerraPass Footprint

The blog gets a name and a makeover, thanks to votes from you!

Months ago we asked you for suggestions for a new name for the blog. We felt this venerable organ deserved something a bit more distinguished than the appearance of just another corporate blog. And so, today, we’re pleased to present to you “The TerraPass Footprint.” You picked the name yourselves. It was suggested by J. McIntyre of Colombus, Ohio who is now the proud owner of one of our wind-up mp3 players. Hundreds of you...

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Unveiling the TerraPass 2009 project portfolio

New projects and the highest quality, with all the details published online.

This is a big day for us here at TerraPass — we’re unveiling our 2009 carbon offset project portfolio. These are the projects that we support with the proceeds from carbon offset sales on our site and through our partners. The TerraPass Carbon Management Services team will almost certainly add more to the 2009 portfolio as we go, but for now we invite you to take a browse through the list - this year...

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Two new projects for your consideration

One landfill in North Carolina, another in South Dakota.

This week we have two new projects open for public comment. The Robeson County Landfill in St. Pauls, North Carolina, began operating a landfill gas collection and flaring project in July 2008. Robeson County is negotiating with potential end-users who will use the landfill gas for industrial process heat or for electricity generation. In the meantime, the methane is being destroyed in a flare, and revenue from carbon offsets is the only funding the project...

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TerraPass on EDF’s CarbonOffsetList.org

Initiative puts spotlight on high-quality carbon offsets.

We’re pleased to announce that TerraPass is featured on CarbonOffsetList.org, a new initiative from Environmental Defense Fund to highlight quality in the voluntary carbon offset market. EDF has been a longtime champion of using innovative market-based mechanisms to bring about greenhouse gas reductions in a cost-effective manner. And TerraPass has long shared EDF’s philosophy toward identifying great projects: an emphasis on sound methodologies, permanent emissions reductions, and third-party verification. We submitted one of our most...

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Vote for the winner in our blog-naming contest

The Footprint? TerraPress? Green Torpedo? Vote for your favorite name for our blog.

Wow. We were totally impressed by the number of submissions for our blog’s new name. We received over 500 suggestions, many of them great options for our blog and newsletter. We’ve come up with a shortlist of eight names and now’s your chance to vote for the winner. One lucky person that votes for the eventual winner will also receive a gift certificate to use at the TerraPass green store. To see what made it...

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More names please!

We’re still looking for name suggestions from you (yes, you) for our blog.

Last week, I told you that we are looking for a new name for our blog. A big “thank you” to everyone who has already submitted a suggestion (an even bigger “THANK YOU” to those who have submitted multiple suggestions). We’ve received over 160 name suggestions in total. But we want more! Submit your new name now, and you could win a Trevor Baylis Eco Media MP3 Player or a TerraPass gift certificate. Already submitted...

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New projects: coast to coast

Projects #16 and #17 are a Washington dairy and a Maryland landfill. Get your comments in!

The TerraPass project team is excited to bring you two more projects for public comment. The New Beulah Landfill methane capture and control project in Dorchester County, MD is a brand new project which isn’t even under construction yet. New Beulah is one of the smallest landfills in Maryland, and TerraPass purchases would help fund the immediate installation of a landfill gas collection system and enclosed flare to destroy the methane. Though engineering estimates predict...

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Our blog by any other name

We’re looking for a new name for our blog, and we need your help.

First, let me introduce myself. I’m Andy, the TerraPass summer intern. I’ve spent the last eight weeks here at TerraPass headquarters in San Francisco, working to improve all aspects of the consumer experience. Second, I’d like your help with one of my projects: renaming this blog. It should be a fun thing for our readers, and it offers the chance of prizes and even internet immortality. As you know, the TerraPass blog is not really...

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Survey says: TerraPass customers (still) really do care

People that buy offsets do plenty to reduce their impact on the environment.

For the second year running we asked TerraPass customers to tell us a little more about themselves and what else they do to reduce their environmental impact. The real news here is that little has changed since our first TerraPass customer survey one year ago (for the stats-inclined among you, there was no statistically significant variation): TerraPass customers continue to be a green-minded group who do plenty to help the environment in addition to purchasing...

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New Projects: two more Wisconsin Dairies

Projects #14 and #15 are Wisconsin Dairies that generate clean energy from methane

Digesters like Holsum Elm’s are a part of a broader environmental management program. The TerraPass project team is excited to bring you two more projects for public comment. Both are dairy digesters in the state of Wisconsin. Holsum Elm Dairy is a relatively new dairy and sister dairy to Holsum Irish, a TerraPass project since 2006. Like Holsum Irish, Holsum Elm has a variety of environmentally friendly management practices including an anaerobic digester project...

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TerraPass customers ditch their cars

Congratulations to the TerraPass customers who haven’t renewed because they’ve gone car-free.

Since starting TerraPass, the most frequent question from budding social entrepreneurs has been some variant of “Won’t your success damage your business?” That is, won’t the need for TerraPass diminish as the world lowers its carbon footprint? Well, I am pleased to say that, yes, we’re starting to see the impact. In a recent survey of our customers, we found that 10% opt not to renew because they’ve gotten rid of their cars. Many of...

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New Project: LP Gill Landfill gas-to-energy Project

Our project reviews continue with the lucky 13th project this year.

The TerraPass project team is excited to bring you yet another project for public comment. The L.P. Gill Landfill project is a beneficial use project that captures methane gas from the L.P. Gill Landfill and pipes it to a nearby ethanol plant. The project reduces the amount of methane that would have been released from a rural landfill serving a large part of northeast Nebraska and neighboring states. The methane is destroyed in a thermal...

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TerraPass member wins race with 124 mpg

Jack Martin teaches sustainable transportation. And boy, does he practice what he preaches.

Hypermiling is all about making the gallon of gas go further… a lot further in some cases. All of us at TerraPass offer our congratulations to hypermiler Jack Martin. On June 7, Jack won the 21st Century Automotive Challenge competition by achieving a driving efficiency of 124 miles per gallon over a 143 mile course in his Honda Insight. Yep, 143 miles with just over gallon of gas. (Notice the TerraPass on his prize-winning vehicle.)...

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TerraPass members reach 1 billion pounds offset

I’m happy to announce that TerraPass members have balanced out a total of 1 billion pounds of CO2 emissions! As of June 30, we’re now recording total purchases of just over the 1,000,000,000-pound mark. This includes purchases made directly on the TerraPass web site, as well as purchases made through partnerships with Expedia, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Sam’s Club, and our newest partner, Climate Change Chocolate (yum!). Since Roman times, milestones have been used to assure travelers...

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New project: Hilarides Dairy open for public comment

Let us know what you think of our eleventh project to go through public review.

Our eleventh project is now open for public comment. The Hilarides Dairy, located in Lindsay, CA, powers almost all of its on-site electricity consumption by capturing waste methane that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. Check it out and let us know what you think by emailing us at projects@terrapass.com. The comment period is open until August 8. And a reminder: the comment period on the Green Valley Dairy is open for two more...

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Counting the carbon from your conference

How big is your event’s carbon footprint? Find out with our latest calculator.

We’re excited to announce a new calculator on the TerraPass website — the event and conference carbon calculator. Many of you have been asking for this and we know that it will help individuals and businesses to understand better the impacts of parties, conferences and other events, large or small. We’ve tried to make this calculator simple to use: just a handful of inputs, and you don’t need comprehensive information about your attendees’ travel plans....

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Florida buys U.S. Sugar, returns land to Everglades

Deal compared to creation of America’s first national park.

This has not much to do with climate change, but it’s too interesting not to mention: The dream of a restored Everglades, with water flowing from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, moved a giant step closer to reality on Tuesday when the nation’s largest sugarcane producer agreed to sell all of its assets to the state and go out of business. Florida is paying $1.75 billion for about 300 square miles of land north of...

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New project: Green Valley Dairy up for public comment

We hit double digits with a tenth project open for review.

The TerraPass project team is excited to bring you our tenth project for public comment. The Green Valley Dairy in Wisconsin is using an anaerobic digester to turn farm waste into a renewable source of electricity and heat. Prior to the project, the manure on this farm was stored in open lagoons and seasonally applied to fields as fertilizer. In open lagoons, manure decomposes anaerobically, creating large amounts of methane emissions. By working with TerraPass...

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350.org launches

Group aims to rally a global grassroots movement around an aggressive goal. Plus a cool video!

Last week saw the launch of 350.org, Bill McKibben’s new project to rally a worldwide movement around the goal of rolling back carbon levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (they currently stand at about 385 ppm). The project has produced this nifty 90-second video, which summarizes its mission without using any words, so that it remains accessible to all the world’s citizens. Check it out:...

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New alliance sets the bar for high-quality offsets

As Senate defers climate action, voluntary market moves forward.

While Congress struggles to find consensus on the best way to tackle global warming, eight leading carbon offset providers, including TerraPass, are moving ahead with an initiative that could greatly expand the voluntary carbon market. The International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA) is launching today with two U.S. companies, TerraPass and Native Energy; five from the U.K, Climate Care, The Carbon Neutral Company, Carbon Clear, Target Neutral, and CO2 Balance; and an Australian firm,...

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Gas purchases plummet

Rising prices inspire Americans to conserve (finally!)

Gasoline consumption has long proved strangely impervious to shifts in the price of oil. No longer: Gas purchases have taken a massive nosedive: “Demand fell 5.5 percent last week.” Resale value of SUVs has plummeted: “There are far more truck-based SUVs being traded in than customers to buy them.” Prius sales are setting new records: “Toyota has sold more Prius cars in the first quarter of 2008 than all other major manufacturers have sold hybrids...

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Choose your own project type

TerraPass now lets you mix your own portfolio of carbon offsets.

Over the weekend, we rolled out the first version of a feature that lets you create a custom portfolio of offsets from project types of your choosing. Now when you purchase an offset from TerraPass, you can help direct our efforts to project types you like the most. When you calculate your footprint and add an offset product to your shopping cart, just click the “change my portfolio” link and mix and match in 1,000...

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Ninth project enters comment period

Comment on our newest project: Upper Rock Island turns waste methane into clean energy.

Four months ago, TerraPass became the first (and is still the only) carbon offset provider to invite the public to review projects before they are included in our portfolio. Now we offer up our ninth project for consideration, the Upper Rock Island County Landfill Gas to Energy facility. This 3.95-megawatt gas-to-energy project at the landfill that serves communities in Rock Island County, Illinois reduces the amount of greenhouse gas (methane) that would otherwise be released...

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‘Drive less’ update

I found the stat I was looking for about the effect of conservation on gas prices. Courtesy of Geoffrey Styles: If we all drove just 12 miles less per week, fuel demand would fall by 5%, the equivalent of almost half a million barrels per day, or all the ethanol produced last year. The impact of that on gas prices would be much more dramatic than waiting for someone else to fix the problem. The...

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Low carbon flights on the internet

TerraPass helps you find air travel that’s lean and green(er).

If you travel a lot, you’re probably used to visiting airline web sites and being asked whether you want to see your flights sorted by price or schedule. How would you like to sort by carbon? Until recently, only experts in aviation emissions could track down this information. But now the public can find comparative data using TerraPass’ new aviation calculator. The results can help you choose the flight with the lowest climate impact. Here’s...

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It’s official: our flight calculator rocks

Enter your airline, seat class, and number of stopovers for most detailed carbon footprint yet.

We pre-announced this a few weeks ago, but now you can see for yourself: the new TerraPass flight calculator gives you the most personalized carbon footprint information available, using data provided by TRX that takes into account not just your route, but also your airline and even your seat class. Check it out. It’s surprising some of the disparities you uncover when you have data like this at your fingertips: Marvel at how Delta is...

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National bike month! National bike month!

A simple, inspiring — and real-world — vision for greener transportation.

It’s national bike month, don’t you know. Get ready for tons and tons of bike blogging! There’s nothing more powerful than the so-called demonstration effect, which is why I continue to be so enamored with the Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog, a site that tirelessly and cheerfully celebrates the seemingly trivial aspects of mass bicycle culture in Denmark. Hopefully the pictures below will put a smile on your face. If they do, go read Alex Steffen’s...

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Flying high: TRX and TerraPass

TerraPass will soon be working with the best air travel carbon data in the troposphere.

In a report released today [pdf] by the highly influential Stockholm Environmental Institute, TRX has been named as having “likely the best currently available air travel CO2 emissions calculator.” That’s no faint praise given the number of carbon calculators available on the web. We’re very excited about the release of this report and the praise for TRX, because we’ve recently agreed to a limited exclusive deal with them to use the data in the...

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