Carbon offsets occur when a polluting company buys a carbon credit to make up for the greenhouse gas it has emitted. The money should be used to fund action somewhere in the world that remove the same amount of carbon out of the air, or to prevent carbon emissions. Carbon offsets fund specific projects that either lower CO2 emissions, or “sequester” CO2, meaning they take some CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it.
Some common examples of projects include reforestation, building renewable energy, carbon-storing agricultural practices, and waste and landfill management. Carbon offsetting is not economically sustainable because “poorer” countries are paid to offset carbon while the “rich” countries continue to emit. This maintains an economic gap between the world's rich and poor. The number of emissions from the worlds rich compared to the world's poor is highly disproportionate. In fact a report released by the United Nations cited that only 100 companies around the world are responsible for 70 percent of the global emissions of carbon into the atmosphere! The positive of Carbon offsetting is that it provides market demand signals to a commodity that has historically been undervalued. Such as forests and wetlands.
Carbon offsets can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas. Reducing your consumption of these, in turn, reduces your carbon footprint, which has huge impacts on environmental, economic, and public health. The varying levels of effectiveness of carbon offset programs make it difficult to choose one that actually reduces emissions. The most effective offset programs are renewable energy programs, followed by energy efficiency improvements, carbon sequestration, and aviation offset programs. About 730 trees offset the average carbon dioxide released for each person's fossil fuel usage.
Non profits like Black Coral Inc. take only 70% of sequestering money from fossil-fuel companies, the other 30% comes from individuals and small corporations that are committed to reducing emissions but still want to compensate for those that they cannot avoid. This is ethical offsetting and it has an important role to play. Carbon offsetting is a controversial tool as companies progress their net zero ambitions. Food giants Nestlé and Unilever stand accused of greenwashing over their climate commitments, for instance. Therefore the task for Black Coral Inc is to monitor closely the results and report them diligently and in full transparency to our supporters and carbon offsetting funders. Delta, Alphabet, and Disney are among the biggest buyers of carbon credits.
Black Coral Inc has worked diligently to access 300 acres of tropical forest in Central America for sequestering. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that a single hectare (2.5 acres) of forest can take up somewhere between 1.5 and 30 metric tons (1.6 and 33 tons) of CO2 per year, depending on the kinds of trees, how old they are, the climate and so on. So it is easy to see that we are doing our part and hope to be able to start educational tourism for Boston and Greater New England educators and students so that Black Coral Inc. sells carbon offsets on what are called voluntary carbon markets.
Carbon credit buyers purchase carbon credits as an investment or businesses trying to meet internal standards for carbon footprint reduction. The area in the Honduras that we sequester is home to tropical forests, which are home to a wide range of species including fruit trees such as Mango ,Breadfruit Hog Plum, Nance and Strangler Fig. You will also find bromeliads, ferns, orchids, bamboo, and palms there as well. On the mainland West of the pine savanna, in low valleys and on lower mountains, which are rainy all year, and on the low, rainy northern mountains are broad belts of dense evergreen broad-leaved forests with many species of large trees, including mahogany, lignum vitae, Spanish cedar, balsa, rosewood, ceiba, sapodilla, and castilloa. Also in Honduras, we find black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) and red mangrove (Rhizopora mangle) trees indicate the boundaries of the mangrove ecosystem which protects the shoreline. Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) trees are sometimes intermingled with mangrove species on dry land, indicating the beginning of the coastal lowland pine forests. The pine tree, Pinus oocarpa, also known locally as ocote, is the national tree of Honduras and it is one of the best trees for carbon offsetting.
That global potential for action is a big reason that carbon offsets are such a valuable tool to address climate change. Carbon offsets range in size from a couple tons that an individual can purchase to gigatons that national governments buy to meet their own targets. The average Pine tree absorbs about 10 kilograms of CO2 per year. Assuming that the standard measurements of tree plantings are about 1000 trees can be in one hectare. If a tree absorbs 10 kg per year, the acre will absorb a total of 10,000kg or 10 tons per year. A Hectare is 2.5 acres So each acre of land sequesters slightly over 5 tons of carbon per year. Note: the price of carbon offsets varies widely from $10 per ton to $50 per ton. Carbon offsets are transacted on the rapidly-growing but still complex voluntary carbon market. Xpansiv market CBL is the world’s largest spot exchange for carbon offset trading with a 38% global market share.
https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/blogs/energy-transition/061021-voluntary-carbon-markets-pricing-participants-trading-corsia-credits
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