On Election Day, CNN Headline News interviewed Standard Carbon’s Brendan Woodward to discuss the carbon footprint of the presidential election. In the full interview, political hypocrisy was discussed as both candidates have proposed cap and trade regulations, but not chosen to follow them on a voluntary basis.

The climate change impact of the two candidates was large-requiring the equivalent carbon offsets of more than 18 square miles of new forest to grow for 10 years.  For Barack Obama, this would have required about $700,000 to purchase enough carbon offsets, or a mere 1% of his 3/4 of a billion dollar campaign budget.

Air travel, commuting, office space, paper, direct mail, meetings and event, fundraisers, and get out the vote (GOTV) activities all contributed to each carbon footprint.

Can we actually reduce CO2 if the president is full of hot air?  Perhaps.  Watch the short segment that aired Tuesday morning:

When discussing the ecological cost of paper, most people focus on the inputs: the trees and resulting deforestation, the water usage, etc. But it’s easy to forget that paper and paper products leave a little something behind too. A pretty good size carbon footprint. Here are our calculations for the carbon output from copy paper:

A 500 sheet package of typical 20 lb copy paper weighs 5 lbs. Therefore, each individual sheet weighs .01 lbs. Compositionally, paper is about half cellulose, which in turn is about half carbon. The amount of carbon in a single sheet (.0025 lbs.) is then multiplied by 3.67 to account for the weight of the full CO2 molecule.

A single sheet of paper produces roughly .0092 lbs of CO2. 500 sheets produces 4.59 lbs of CO2.

According to a survey findings in Europe, an average office worker uses 10,000 printed pages per year. Nearly one fifth are printed needlessly. The CO2 created from these unnecessary pages weighs almost 16 lbs.

For ways to reduce your office paper usage, click here. We recommend not printing these tips off and posting them in your office.

For what you can’t reduce, you can offset your paper usage with Standard Carbon.

Ron Sims is a crusader. Since October 2007, plans have been in the works to make greenhouse gas mitigation one of the required elements for a SEPA permit (State Environmental Policy Act). This means that many contractors, and even building supplies companies doing business in King County Washington will have to account for their CO2.

The County has prepared an excel spreadsheet that can be used to measure the Carbon Footprint of construction activities, as required by the regulation. It is not clear, however, what the appropriate and accepted steps for avoiding greenhouse gas emissions will be for compliance with the King County Global warming Initiative.

Carbon Offsetting should be accepted by the county for compliance with the new SEPA regulations. This would provide a streamlined, easily verified way for constructions projects to assist the environment, without sacrificing their quality or proven construction methods. Contact Standard Carbon if you would like to make your work site carbon neutral.

Of course not!  When the price for carbon Offsets rises, like it has been doing for the past months, it brings more projects to the market. We expect to be able to invest in more diverse projects now that the price is higher because new environmental projects will become more financially feasible.

We launched our federal campaign package at the beginning of this month to help Congressman, Senators, and even Presidential Candidates keep track of their global warming pollution and offset it. So far, so good.

I have been calling Congressional campaigns all day and usually get in touch with a Communications Director or campaign manager  within two tries. Then I email them this form to calculate their carbon footprint.  It is really easy to be a carbon neutral campaign.

Our program is the only one in the country for politicians to offset their greenhouse gas with reputable carbon offsets from US based projects. We are using the same high quality offsets as Speaker Pelosi’s Green the Capitol Initiative, and the worksheet for calculating a campaign carbon footprint is simple to use.

The bottom line: there is no excuse in this election for political campaigns to not be carbon neutral. More to come…

Soon there will be a biofuel station on every corner and clean renewable energy will compete with the big oil that has so long had a hold on our gas caps.

The US EPA has been developing standards and reporting for renewable fuel producers in compliance with federal laws that require a minimum amount of renewable energy.

The Biodiesel Board has put together a large, interactive map of refueling stations all over the country. Take a look and you will be surprised how it can actually be possible to opperate a vehichle exclusivly on biofuels.

B100 biodiesel is responsible for 78% less CO2 emissions than typical fossil fuel diesel. This translates into an carbon offset requirement of about 5lbs for each gallon of biodiesel, or right around $.01 for every four miles.

This means that if you want to eliminate your carbon footprint by reducing your emissions and then offsetting, biodiesel is a great place to start.

I just read my CCX Newsletter, and would like to make an announcement: voluntary action to reduce CO2 emissions through America’s own has reached 25% of the entire EU ETS, and a full 16% of all stationary US emissions. Amazing.

What this means is that without writing a single new law, almost one fifth American Industry, small businesses and individuals have voluntarily set to reduce and cap emissions.

Carbon footprint standards are starting to emerge in the UK.  Some new labels developed by the Carbon Trust and the Government Department of Environment  feature the carbon footprint estimation for endorsed products.  The article by Climate Change Corpsuggests that consumers favor products with a clear statement of carbon dioxide emissions.

A study conducted by Populus Research for Walker’s Potatoe Crisps ( that would be potatoe chips in American English) found that 50% of purchasers favored a product with a carbon footprint label, while 69% looked more favorable at the manufacturer for demonstrating transparent leadership.  Very interesting.

 -Brendan

What are Kilowatts? 

According to the US Department of Energy, 40% of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off, though not unplugged. So even though the appliances, clocks, radios, computers, lamps are turned off they are still adding to your kWh total. Think about items you use less frequently around the house and unplug them. Help bring your energy bill down and your carbon footprint.

It is important to understand how much power you are using as you try to get your carbon footprint under control. If you are confused about your power bill and what it means, this should be a help.

A watt is a unit of energy use often applied to electricity. If you liken electricity flowing through metal wires to the water flowing through a garden hose, the watts would be the amount of water, the volts would be the pressure, and the amps are the size of the hose.

A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is a unit of energy equal to one kilowatt (1000 watts) of power running or being used for one hour of time. For example, if you are cooking a chicken in your 800 watt toaster oven, and reading a book under four 50 watt incandescent light bulbs, you would be using 1000 watts of energy, or 1 kilowatt. If this went on for one hour, it would be one kilowatt hour of energy use.

The energy consumed by businesses and homes if often expressed in Kilowatt-hours. A megawatt-hour is equivalent to 1000 kWh and is most often used by larger business and institutions. A kilowatt-hour measures electrical energy whereas a kilowatt measures available power.

If one were so inclined you could use kW and ‘time’ to find the amount of Energy expressed in kWh.
Energy = Power * Time
So a 2.5 kW electric heater which runs for 5 hours would have a value of 12.5kWh.

Familiarity with kilowatt-hours can make figuring out your carbon footprint easier. Once you have a background of the language and items needed to figure out a carbon footprint you will have that much more faith in its accuracy as you are comfortable with where the data is coming from and why. Knowing that you have a 1200 watt microwave is nice, but it won’t get you very far in figuring out your footprint unless you know how long it runs. Using your electricity bill to find kilowatt-hours will help you when calculating your carbon footprint as it takes into consideration the amount of time.

-Angie

Quote: “Changing to more energy efficient light bulbs is a fine thing to do, but to somehow imply we can avert a climate disaster by these actions is absurd.”

This is an excerpt from US Senator James Inhofe in Sept of 2006 in which he blasts media coverage of global warming and calls the Kyoto Protocol symbolism and nothing more. At Standard Carbon we would argue that changing a light bulb is exactly what we need. What makes changing a light bulb effective is when you get 100-200 million people changing their light bulbs. You get businesses saving $ and electricity by using motion censors, efficient heating and cooling systems, and yes changing light bulbs!

According to the Environmental defense fund, by replacing a single 100 watt incandescent light bulb with a new compact florescent bulb, one can save over $100 and 1,400 lbs of CO2.

The cure for CO2 pollution may come in many small doses. This does not mean that something as simple as changing a light bulb is absurd!

-Angie