Now just a year ago I wouldn't really consider myself a treehugger. I'm sure most of you folks on here don't consider yourself treehuggers either. However, after buying the Escape Hybrid I began to study my impact on the environment a little closer. For example, my Escape Hybrid outputs 7,004 lbs of CO2 per year.

What I've found that is in addition to driving a fuel efficient vehicle and making intelligent driving decisions...there is one more thing you can do. In fact, Ford actually just made it easier by slapping their name on a campaign/product for renewable energy certificates and carbon credit offsets.

From the Ford/Terra Pass website:
What does it mean to drive “carbon neutral?”
It means that for every mile you drive, you reduce one mile’s worth of carbon dioxide emissions elsewhere.

Check out the site: http://www.terrapass.com/ford/

I thought it was pretty nifty now that Ford is teaming with this company so I thought I'd share with you folks.

--Tom

 

Well I just signed up. With 10% coupon it was $27. I only drive about 8k miles a year so I guess I am more than neutral


Interesting concept.

 

I checked it out, my FEH emits 22,088 lbs of CO2 per year. This is based off my my 35000 mile yearly average

 

This is interesting... The calculator seems to be simply based on miles driven annually and EPA MPG numbers. I don't think it takes into account the cleaner burning of different types of engines, and how much cleaner/dirtier they may be.

I did a comparison of my old truck and my new FEH. The numbers were way too close - much closer than my real-world calculations. Mainly because it also doesn't take into account the type of driving - much of my driving is in an ultra-urban environment where you're at a stand-still a lot of the time. The actual mileage numbers for my truck were closer to half that of the EPA with this type of driving, while the FEH is at least close to them.

 

When you buy a TerraPass you're effectively funding research and development in environmentally friendly energy sources roughly in proportion to your vehicle's CO2 output. The idea is to get you to give them money, not to accurately calculate your CO2 output based on your driving style. I'm sure some people actually give more than they need to. Actually, I remember reading on the site that several of the members don't even own cars!

I signed up today. Tom, thanks for pointing this out. I would probably have missed it otherwise.

 

The calculation is pretty exact if you want it to be- you can go in with your own MPG and miles, and use that. Or just calculate it youself, and buy at the appropriate level. The calculator they provide is simply based on the EPA figures, since not many people know their mpg or how much fuel they've bought. If I know I used 333 gallons and drove 10000 miles, I emitted 6500lb of CO2, period. Their calculator gives the same number.

CO2 is 100% in proportion to the amount of gas you use. 1 gallon of gasoline produces 19.5lb of C02. Then you round to the closest level they have set up.

If you use E85 or diesel or biodiesel, then calculate your own, at 11.5lb/gal for E85, and (lookup somewhere) for diesel.

CO2 is by far the dominant factor coming form our tailpipes. All they claim is to be shooting to equate out the CO2, not the other CO, SO2, NOx, etc. So clean burning and emissions controls do not factor in. 1 gallon of gas burned means 19.5 new pounds of CO2 in teh atmosphere.

They then use your purchase to buy credits and/or invest in projects that will prevent ~that amount of CO2 from being put in the air...thus CO2 neutrality of a sort.

They are taking advantage of the "small signal" effect of low demand/high supply regimes: their purchasing of carbon credits at present levels will not have a large effect on the overall supply/demand of carbon credits, and so they can bet that the price will remain low for the forseeable term. Credits are something like $3.50/ton in the US, I think. There is barely even a market for them, since we blew off Kyoto. Thus Terrapass can live and thrive.

 

Ethanol is already carbon-neutral. You are putting CO2 back into the air THIS YEAR that was taken out of the air by corn THIS YEAR *(or close).

Burning fossil fuels puts CO2 into the air that was taken out millions of years ago.
Thus, it has a cummulative effect now, where fuel ethanol does not, and will not.

If you burn E85 all the time, one TerraPass should cancel out 6 years of driving!

-John

 

But how much carbon was used to get that E85? How much water was used to grow the corn? Was the crop fertilized using carbon-neutral products? Many energy inputs/sources seem to be missing in the ethanol-good argument. As-is the hydrogen boondoggle.

What about using renewable solar/wind etc. to just charge a battery to propel a car? Battery tech is way better than even last week! So is EV range and performance. And the infrastructure is there already. What's better, "plugging-in" your car to a gas station pump or conveinently plugging your car in at home?

 

Corn in the U.S. is a tricky matter. It's no longer food, it's a commodity. We grow exponentially more than we can eat, and it becomes a source material for an unbelievable amount of other products. There is "corn" in just about every type of processed food (high-fructose corn syrup, citric acid, glucose, fructose, maltodextrin, lactic acid, sorbitol, mannitol, xantham gum, modified and unmodified starches, MSG, beverage-bound ethanol, etc. etc.). Most of our meat is actually fed corn - something that is completely unnatural for cows, and requires lots of drugs and antibiotics to treat the problems that arise from feeding them corn.

It no longer grows naturally (for the most part), because it can't. The reason it's so prodigious is due to the genetically-modified hybrid strain and the use of artificial fertilizers, made from and with fossil fuels. It's industrialized agriculture, and like just about anything else 'industrialized' it was made possible with the use of fossil fuels.

To get back on topic, carbon-neutrality is all but impossible to calculate since there are so many factors involved and so many things that happen upstream that are difficult to account for.

Bottom line is, if we can try to keep as much of these things in mind as we can, and then use that knowledge to choose better alternatives - choices made with our purchases (as that's where our power lies in this society) - we can do better.