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Carbon offsets are credits that you purchase in order to balance out your emissions. You fund a project that will remove or store that same amount of carbon dioxide you emitted but in a different place. Your credit purchase means you “retire” the emissions to a carbon sink such as land restoration or the planting of trees.
Here’s how it might work for you. You fly from Boston to LA, releasing over 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and you purchase an offset to reconcile the emissions your travel generated.
A carbon offset broadly refers to a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or an increase in carbon storage that is used to compensate for emissions that occur elsewhere. Because GHGs mix globally in the atmosphere, it does not matter where exactly they are…
Read the full article originally published at cleantechnica.com.