airlines and everything with built-in carbon offset

Will SOA save the world?  We're working on it.
Jon Udell has a fascinating InfoWorld article "The carbon-adjusted supply chain: SOA-enabled optimization can help reduce businesses' impact on the global environment" and accompanying blog posting.

Does Amazon know enough about its supply chain, ... to assign a value to the atmospheric carbon attributable to the manufacturing and shipping of its products? Bezos thought that the answer was no, but he was clearly intrigued by the question. So am I.

...

Economists have a wonderful euphemism for environmental impacts. They call them “externalities,” and we can blithely ignore them until Rhode Island-size chunks of Antarctic sea ice start to vanish. Then we start to realize that, in a closed ecosystem, there are no externalities.

In order for Amazon to be able to measure and report its externalities, of course, Amazon’s suppliers would themselves have to be able to measure and report theirs. That would be a major challenge, to be sure. But it’s exactly the kind of challenge that SOA-enabled supply chain optimization prepares us to tackle.

To my surprise, there are already a number of initiatives to help people offset their carbon from air travel, although I don't know how big the idea is yet in those paragons of carbon production, the US, Canada and Australia.

Anyway, my Big Idea is quite simple and appears to be already underway at various sites: every airline should include, as one of its option fees, a pre-calculated carbon offset cost with a trusted offset vendor.  Air Canada, are you listening?

Ideally, offset providers should have calculation Web Services and payment Web Services that other sites could use.

[UK] DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) - Carbon Offset Scheme Launched - September 12, 2005

British Airways has launched a new scheme, backed by the government, where its customers can volunteer to help to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from their flight by making a contribution to an environmental trust.

The money raised will be used by an organisation called Climate Care to invest in sustainable energy projects that tackle global warming by reducing carbon dioxide levels.

Air travellers can choose to make a donation from today (September 12) via a link from the airline's website, ba.com, for the cost of the emissions created by their journey. For example, the donation on a return flight from London Heathrow to Madrid will cost £5 and a return flight from London Heathrow to Johannesburg will cost £13.30.

You can visit http://www.britishairways.com/travel/climateimpact/public/en_gb for more info.

Silverjet, also in the UK, is building carbon neutrality into their price.

Silverjet, the first British airline to offer a low fare, exclusively business class service across the Atlantic, today announces that it will be the world’s first airline to become carbon neutral on all its flights.

Included within its ticket prices will be a mandatory carbon offset contribution, giving passengers the opportunity to reinvest the “carbon points” thus earned back into a number of climate friendly projects around the world. This still enables Silverjet to offer low fare long haul, exclusively business class, transatlantic flights from as little as £999, return.

The scheme is being set up in partnership with the leading climate change business, The CarbonNeutral Company, and it has been developed in accordance with the CarbonNeutral protocol, which is the leading standard and quality mark for action on climate change.

Silverjet PR - Silverjet is the world's first airline to go carbon neutral - November 26, 2006

In Canada, there is UNIGLOBE Travel's Green Flight Program

UNIGLOBE Travel's Green Flight Program is one of the ways you can achieve your CO2 reduction goals.

UNIGLOBE Travel's Green Flight program is getting much press for its ability to provide companies in Canada with the mechanism that has, for a long time been missing to meet carbon emission offset goals. One way to achieve these goals is to purchase carbon offset credits from UNIGLOBE Travel that are calculated on the number of miles flown in an aircraft generated by companies business, conference or employee incentive travel.

The monies collected from the credits are then invested into environmental programs supported by Environment Canada.

UNIGLOBE's offset provider is Baseline Emissions Management Inc., and the specific site provided by Baseline is

http://www.greenmyflight.com/

Also, via The Great Canadian Carbon Offset 2006, I find a rather roundabout offset arrangement - buy a WestJet ticket via offsetters.ca and offsetters will use their affiliate income to offset some of the carbon. (GCCO2006 link via Treehugger.)

lastminute.com UK also offers this option

Customers using lastminute.com are to be given the option to offset carbon dioxide emissions from flights.

The online retailer claims to have become the first major travel company to make CO2 offsetting an integral part of buying a flight in a Government-backed initiative.

Payments will be invested in sustainable energy projects to reduce the damage done to the environment in a partnership with Climate Care, an organisation which tackles global warming.

TravelMole - Lastminute.com to offer emissions offset option - November 24, 2006

and indeed the option appears prominently at the top of their UK site, with accompanying web page

and not at all on their US site

cheapflights.co.uk has a variety of information - Air passengers can offset CO2 at Treeflights

Passengers who want to offset the carbon dioxide emitted from their flights have the option of using a new carbon-offsetting website where they can pay to plant a tree.

Treeflights, whose motto is "You fly – we plant", will plant one tree in a Welsh forest for each flight taken, at a cost of £10 (or $19/€15).

as well they list other options on their Carbon Emissions page

Al Gore uses Native Energy to offset all of his travel, but unfortunately it's a bit US-centric (miles? map of the USA?)

http://www.nativeenergy.com/travel/

There are lots of competing carbon offset providers, unfortunately I have neither the skills nor the time to evaluate them all.  I may expand this posting as I learn more.

Wikipedia - Carbon offset is probably another good starting point, and they'd take away my Canadian environment blazer badge if I didn't point to David Suzuki.org - Go Carbon Neutral.

Comments

[Alane]

Richard, I am glad you posted about this as it was on my blogging "to do" list. I beong to the Association of Professional Futurists and this topic was raised some weeks ago on the APF electronic list. One of the organizers of Pop!Tech wrote about working with SELF (Solar Electric Light Fund www.self.org) to create a "carbon neutral" event. This is from the Pop!Tech blog:
"This year Pop!Tech partnered with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) and Lexus to offset double the carbon emissions generated as a result of the conference, making Pop!Tech 2006 not just carbon neutral, but ‘carbon negative’. To do so we calculated the carbon emissions of all attendees, taking into account the air & vehicle travel for each attendee as well as the total energy consumed at the Camden Opera House over the three days of the conference. By carbon offsets purchased from SELF will help fund SELF’s goal to provide solar electricity to 44 villages in Benin - bringing clean, renewable energy to homes, schools, health care clinics and micro enterprises – and improving the quality of life for these residents in fundamental yet profound ways.(www.poptechprg/blog)"

It would be nice, wouldn't it, to see major ibrary associations incorporate this into the infrastructures of conferences. How to do this?

[Ru Hartwell]

Richard Hi,
I had the same idea as you a year ago when I started the Treeflights project. I went to every British airline and without exception they rejected the idea that they could give people a built in offset option.
Their problem is that (at that time at least)they were unable to acknowledge that flying is a destructive activity,which would be implicit if they facilitated offsetting. The debate has moved on a bit now and I can see a time when to fly without offsetting will be seen in the same light as smoking around children i.e. as being selfish and destructive to future generations.
Thanks for the link!