Buying Green
Does it really help the environment?
By Jennifer Weeks

Americans will spend an estimated $500 billion this year on products and services that claim to be good for the environment because they contain non-toxic ingredients or produce little pollution and waste. While some shoppers buy green to help save the planet, others are concerned about personal health and safety. Whatever their motives, eco-consumers are reshaping U.S. markets. To attract socially. . . .

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• Do carbon offsets slow climate change?
• Should government require green purchases?
• Is buying green better for the environment than buying less?

Does the United States need a national renewable electricity portfolio standard?

Gov. Bill Ritter, Jr., D-Colo. From testimony before House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Sept. 20, 2007	Chris M. Hobson Senior Vice President, Research and Environmental Affairs, Southern Company. From testimony before House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Sept. 20, 2007

A 21st-Century Carbon Glossary

Carbon footprint — The sum of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused during a specified time period by a person's activities, a company's operations or the production, use and disposal of a product.

Carbon neutral — Operating in a way that does not produce any net addition of GHGs to the atmosphere. For both businesses and individuals, becoming carbon neutral typically involves two steps: reducing GHG emissions that they generate directly, through steps such as conserving energy; and buying carbon offsets that equal whatever direct GHG emissions they cannot eliminate.

Carbon offset — An activity that reduces GHG emissions, such as planting trees to take up atmospheric carbon dioxide or producing energy from carbon-free fuels like wind and solar energy. Buying carbon offsets is a way of contracting out GHG emission reductions, typically because the offset project can reduce emissions more cheaply than the buyer can.

Carbon trading — Buying and selling GHG emission allowances (government permits to release a specific quantity of pollution) or emission-reduction credits, which may be issued by government under mandatory regulations or created by companies and individuals through voluntary trading schemes.

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) — Heat-trapping gases that absorb solar energy in the atmosphere and warm earth's surface. Six major GHGs are controlled under the Kyoto Protocol, but since carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most abundant and causes the most warming, companies and governments convert their total emissions into CO2 equivalents.

Renewable energy certificates (RECs) — Certificates that represent the environmental attributes of electricity produced from renewable sources and can be sold separately from the electricity itself. Investors can buy RECs to support green energy whether or not they are located close to the source. Some companies may market themselves as “powered by green energy,” even though they use electricity from coal- or gas-fired power plants, because they buy RECs to equal their total electric power usage (thus helping to put that amount of carbon-free energy into the electric power grid).