It’s simple really – the carbon emitter (you) pays somebody else to reduce their emissions, rather than reducing your own.

For example, let's suppose you drive 15,000 miles per year and have no option to avoid driving. There is no transit alternative where you live. You might purchase a hybrid car in order to reduce your carbon footprint, but even at 50 mpg, the car is still burning 300 gallons of gasoline per year, and therefore producing 5,820 pounds of CO2. This is slightly more than 2.6 metric tons.

Since you cannot avoid the driving, your next best choice is to offset it. In this example, you would pay CarLess Carbon $78 to offset an entire year of driving your hybrid ($30 per ton). We'd then put your $78 against the purchase of an older, polluting car. Once we've accumulated enough money, we'd buy such a car and scrap it. You could continue to drive with a clear conscience, knowing that you have removed a car from the road. Not only that, but you've removed a car far worse than yours.

You can offset any or all of your carbon emissions, from airplane travel to home lighting.

In the perfect world, we would all be "carbon-neutral".  The energy we consume would be balanced by the natural world around us.  In the real world, it’s not so easy.  Suppose you are required to take airplane trips for your work.  Should you quit your job out of concern for the environment?  Even if you did, would that stop your company from hiring someone else who would be willing to hop on the plane in your place?  With offsets, you are paying another person to reduce their emissions, somebody who can do it more easily than you can.

When you pay for an offset, it is important that the money goes toward a project that (a) enhances the environment; and (b) could not have otherwise happened without your contribution. This latter point is the key - if your offset money is spent on a project that was happening anyway, you've accomplished nothing.

The short answer: we directly reduce carbon emissions on a dollar-for-dollar basis.  You give a dollar to CLC and we use it to take an identifiable known polluter (an older car) off the road, while creating demand for public transit.  There is no question about the relationship between the offset purchase and the carbon emission impact.

There are many offset firms to consider.  All firms do the same thing: accept money from the emitter and use it to underwrite "projects" that reduce carbon elsewhere.  The key differentiator is the nature of the firm’s projects; where the money goes. CarLess Carbon’s project is scrapping polluting cars and helping people never drive again. Some firms attempt to capture carbon already in the atmosphere, for example by planting trees. Some of them even illustrate their carbon impact saying things like, "this is equivalent to taking 1,000 cars off the road". Why not just take 1,000 cars off the road? We believe that eliminating carbon emissions at the source is simpler, more direct, and easier to verify (cars have titles and odometers - trees don't).

We are a non-profit corporation with very low operating expenses.  We cover our costs with the money we get for the cars as scrap metal.  One-hundred percent of every dollar we receive from the sales of offsets goes directly to scrapping cars and providing transit passes to newly car-less people.

Check out The Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers.  CarLess Carbon was not in business when the guide was published.  But we like to think we’d have been highly ranked if we had been (maybe next year).

We have two methods.

• We locate people who are willing to sell us their older model cars.  We prefer "dirty" vehicles like SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans.  The cars we buy are "daily drivers" – automobiles that are being used on a regular basis.  The seller is free to go buy another car, but we have still reduced the car population by one.  The type of car we scrap would have produced about 70 metric tons of carbon over its remaining life, on average.  By the way, a "metric ton" is the metric measurement used globally for carbon.  One metric ton equals 2,204 pounds.

• Even better, we encourage car-less living.  To do this, we buy and scrap the car as above.  But then the seller takes the next step – they sign a pledge to not replace the car.  This is much better for the environment since it eliminates the emissions from that vehicle, plus eliminates the emissions from producing gasoline for that driver to use in the future.  It also avoids emission associated with manufacturing a new car to replace the one we scrapped.  Altogether the average reduction is now slightly more than 100 metric tons.

In addition, the now car-less person is creating demand and a constituency for public transit.  The effect is multiplied since CLC’s project is only in one metropolitan area (Portland, Oregon USA). The impact of even 1,000 car-less people in a smaller city like Portland is magnified more than it would be if the same 1,000 people were scattered across the country or globe.

The private automobile is the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.  More than 2/3 of all the oil produced in the world is burned in vehicles, the vast majority of them private cars.  Yet the value added by this energy consumption is minimal (trips to the grocery store, commuting, etc.).  If we’re going to pollute, we’re better served making a more useful output, like electricity or clean water.

There is also a known, less-polluting alternative to the private car – public transit.  Other polluting technologies don’t have an convenient "green" alternative.  For example, there is no electrically powered airplane but there are electric light-rail trains.

A common way to offset carbon emissions is planting trees.  However, this is problematic.  Are the trees new or would they have grown anyway?  Are they planted on meadow or prairie land that was already absorbing carbon?  How do we know they won’t be cut in the future, or burned in a forest fire?

When we scrap a car that was in regular use, we can be certain that carbon emissions are reduced.

When we scrap a car, the carbon reduction is the expected emissions for that specific vehicle for its remaining life.  This is the greenhouse gas that would have flowed from its tailpipe for the next ten years or so (depending on how old the car is when scrapped).  But if the driver becomes car-less, we reduce carbon further.  Because the car is not replaced, the gasoline that driver would have purchased for the next ten years need not be produced.  Producing and distributing gasoline also generates greenhouse gases.  In addition, since the car is never being replaced, we avoid the emission associated with manufacturing an automobile.  These two elements (producing gasoline and manufacturing cars) add about 1/3 to the total lifetime emissions from an automobile.

The person who agrees to be car-less signs a pledge.  They promise they will not buy a vehicle to replace the one that CarLess Carbon bought from them.  They also promise they will not operate somebody else’s automobile, except for occasional use of car-sharing programs.  What does this mean?  It means they will walk, bicycle, or take public transit exclusively.

In order for such a program to have a chance, there must be useful alternatives.  This is why CLC is restricting its initial operations to Portland, Oregon.  Portland has an excellent public transit system and bicycling is encouraged.  In the future, CLC expects to expand into other cities with similar infrastructure.

Carbon offsets exist to reduce global climate change.  It does not matter where the emissions are reduced – all greenhouse gases produced anywhere in the world end up in the same atmosphere.

The cars go straight to a scrap yard, where they are stripped and crushed.  The crushed body is recycled, any useful parts that were removed are reused.  When you purchase an offset from CarLess Carbon, you "adopt" a specific car and receive a detailed email confirmation once the car is ultimately destroyed.

Nothing. Please be clear about this — we are not "Big Brother" and have no method of determining if somebody who signed the pledge actually honors it. However, we interview people and attempt to weed out any blatant frauds up front. If we have any suspicion that the person is not being honest with us, we will simply buy the car, but not give them the car-less option. But even a person with the best intentions can have their circumstances change. And it’s not easy to be car-less in America. We ask for good faith effort, but cannot force compliance.

Our price for carbon is dictated by our project.  The vehicles we target produce about 70 metric tons of carbon over ten years.  At $30 per metric ton, this car is "worth" $2,100 in carbon.  We have to pay close to market price for the cars.  A ten-year-old car in good condition has a market value of at least $2,000.  If the driver commits to be car-less, we also provide an annual transit pass worth nearly a thousand dollars.  Every penny we receive from offsets goes directly to paying for cars and transit passes.

Other offset providers have different projects with different costs.  Prices vary from nearly $100 per metric ton to as little as $5.  As you compare, be careful that all the prices are in the same measure.  The international standard is the metric ton (sometimes written "tonne").  And look closely at the merit of the project your offset is funding.  You get what you pay for.  The offset you purchase from CarLess Carbon is going directly to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a legitimate concern – there have been reports of providers doing just that.  For the moment, you will have to take our word for it.  As soon as we can afford it, we plan to hire third-party auditors to certify that our claims and procedures are as they appear.

No.  CarLess Carbon is non-profit, but we are not classified as a charity under IRS section 501(c)3.  Environmental organizations that are not politically active (like CarLess Carbon) do not currently qualify for tax exemption.