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You've measured your impact, and you've started reducing your carbon footprint. But you'll won't totally eliminate it without some help. Offset the rest by...

... Buying Carbon Offsets

Carbon offsets let you pay to reduce carbon emissions by funding projects that reduce carbon that would have otherwise been emitted. We did a post on carbon offsets recently, and Wikipedia has a great writeup about them.

There are a few key things you need to know about offsets:

1. Additionality is key: Buying good offsets is important, and there are many important characteristics of a good offset, but one of the most important is additionality. Put simply, additionality means that the carbon that you paid to offset would NOT have been offset anyway, had you not bought the offset - it happened in addition. Makes sense right? If it was going to happen anyway, did you offset anything?

2. Know thy Verifier - Additionality is just one of many factors that make it difficult for the layperson to judge the quality of a carbon offset. Because of the complexity and subjectivity in this area, the second key thing to make sure who has verified your carbon offset supplier, and understand how THEY work.Some, such as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Gold Standard and Voluntary Gold Standard have high standards for such things like additionality, but have high costs, and are only used for big projects. Others, such as Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) or Green-e have simpler methodologies but may neglect things like additionality.

Based on these factors, the following companies are recommended by either Tufts Climate Initiative or Clean Air Cool Planet are:

• AgCert/ DrivingGreen
• atmosfair (recommended by both!)
• Carbon Neutral Co.
• Climate Care
• climate friendly
• Climate Trust
• co2balance
• Myclimate (recommended by both!)
• NativeEnergy?

... Buying Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs)

Buying RECs allow you to ensure that any electricity you use is renewable, regardless of where you are, and where you get your energy from. How?

Renewable Energy Certificates are certificates issued to energy producers who generate renewable electricity. These certificates represent the renewable attributes of the energy they produce. By buying these certificates from the renewable energy producers, you are able to essentially pay for renewable energy, whether or not you are actually getting renewable energy in your home. To learn more about RECs, please see the Green-e website, which has a good glossary definition.

The Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy website has a great list of REC marketers.