WHAT ARE CARBON CREDITS?
Concerned citizens around the world are doing their best to reduce their production of greenhouse gases, and the purchase of carbon credits should not be viewed as an alternative to making our best efforts to reduce those emissions. However, it is not always possible to make the necessary reductions in the near future. For example, switching to fuel efficient vehicles or substantially reducing air travel may not be immediately available options. In these situations, one option is to invest in the installation of technologies that do reduce greenhouse gas emissions from other sources.
Carbon credits are a system that allows individuals to invest in technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in one location (eg. Africa), to offset reductions that were not possible to make at home. How the program works is:
- you calculate the emissions which you are creating and want to offset
- you determine how large an investment is required to offset those emissions
- Farmers Helping Farmers invests those funds in projects which effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Africa
Key considerations in the purchase of carbon credits are that the investments be efficient in terms of reducing emissions and that they be incremental, that is, they must not be items which would be done anyway. Investments in developing countries will be incremental because there are very few funds available for investment in these technologies.
Some examples (and costs per T of CO2) of initiatives available from other vendors of carbon credits are: solar and wind power projects in Asia and Africa ($37 / T), wind farms in New Zealand and Australia ($21 / T), biogas generators on North American farms ($9 /T) and solar power installations in India or South Africa ($20 / T).
Farmers helping Farmers provides two carbon credit options: small scale biogas generators for use on 1-3 cow dairy farms, and fuel efficient cookers for use in institutions such as rural schools, clinics etc. These reduce greenhouse gases at a cost of $13 per Tonne. As can be seen, FHF projects compare very favourably with initiatives from much larger organizations in terms of cost effectiveness.
