photo courtesy Stanford University AAD Group

Over the past year as I have prepared for the launch of the Kuzuka carbon offset marketplace I have become much more aware of how to reduce business carbon footprints. Why have I become a footprint reduction expert? Because offsetting is only the final step in dealing with a carbon footprint - more important are taking feasible and realistic steps to reduce carbon emissions. These steps save businesses money in a couple of ways: it reduces their energy costs and it minimizes the number of offsets that have to be purchased.

Business travel is one area where a lot of manageable and high-impact carbon footprint reductions can occur. Probably the biggest way to reduce business travel emissions is to eliminate the travel itself. Today’s networking technology is so effective that many trips can now be avoided through the use of on-line seminars and video conferencing. For smaller groups teleconferences should always be considered as an alternative to face-to-face meetings.

If business travel is absolutely necessary then it is suggested that non-stop flights be used when available. A disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions from air travel are emitted during the take-off and landing phases of the flight. Therefore a trip with multiple legs has a larger amount of time spent taking off and landing than a direct flight.

Now let me explain my guilty carbon conscience. In a couple of days I have to make the trip across the country to Vancouver for some business meetings that unfortunately cannot be done via email or teleconference. Strike One. When I booked my travel a couple of weeks ago I was given the choice of flying from Toronto to Vancouver (direct) or from London Ontario to Vancouver (with a stop in Toronto). I selected the second choice, which involves a short 40-minute flight from London to Toronto before making the cross-country trip. Strike Two. Thankfully I can’t think of a Strike Three in my trip planning - at least not yet.

What was my reason for breaking the ‘fly direct whenever possible’ rule? It basically comes down to the fact that I wanted to start my trip in a close-by and quiet regional airport (London) instead of clawing my way for over two hours through horrible traffic to the busiest airport in the country (Toronto). Does this make me an eco-terrorist on this trip? I suppose that is up for debate - I do know that I will be a heck of a lot nicer person to deal with after starting my day in London, which the person who has to sit beside me for over four hours to Vancouver should be thankful for. That’s at least one person who should agree with my decision.

The catastrophic mid-June floods in the US Midwest brought emotional and economic turmoil to that part of the country which we hope they are able to recover from quickly. The floods could also have a significant impact on the carbon offsets that are derived from the agricultural soils in that region.

Reduced tillage of agricultural fields increases the amount of carbon that is stored in the soils. Carbon offset credits from reduced tillage are commonly used in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). 46% of the CCX’s pre-2008 portfolio was from soil carbon sequestration, and much of that is from reduced tillage practices in the US Midwest.

The June 18 2008 North America newsletter by Point Carbon had a brief article that mentioned that acres might have to be pulled out of reduced till to plant new crops to replace those destroyed by flooding. Dave Krog (CEO of carbon credit aggregator Agragate) explained: “When you have a lot of standing water in a field - especially one that has a lot of plant material on the ground, you get large accumulations of trash (corn stock) accumulated in indifferent spots. It’s really difficult to plant through some of that trash.”

The full impacts of the devastating floods on CCX carbon offsets will likely not be known for several months as farmers decide the management practices (if any) that are needed to rehabilitate their water-logged fields. While the farmers have not started to pull out of their tillage agreements yet, it seems likely that a significant number of them may do so. This illustrates the main concern with soil sequestration offsets (permanence) and the need for reliable and robust insurance mechanisms to be in place to guard against situations like this.

In the voluntary carbon market tillage-derived offsets are very much a CCX product. Reduced tillage is an almost non-existent method of generating offsets for carbon retailers that are not CCX members.