Carbon Emissions | July 11, 2009 |
Consumer Carbon Offset Website Needs Cleaning Up
A new website promises cash rewards for home utility bill reductions, but will it manage to peak attention? MyEmissionsExchange was launched last week, but the site lacked obvious safeguards to ensure customer confidence.
Recently lauded by Time Magazine for appealing to "checkbooks instead of our conscience," MyEmissionsExchange could provide the incentives needed for emission reduction. In an interview with The Daily Green, Tom Reilly, president of MyEex, said "This is the only effort out there that can align green activity with financial benefit."
The company works off a household's last twelve months of utility bills to generate an average usage, and then sells the reductions the customers make on the voluntary carbon market.
MyEex appears to deliver on their promises to incentivize through a simple payment system (PayPal), however it does not clearly describe how potential buyers will be attracted. The company also neglects to elaborate on its certification process.
"Credits are... verified by MyEex using proprietary software and then certified to international standards using unique and proprietary protocols developed by MyEex" is the only information listed on the site.
They refer to "recognized certification standards," but provide little in the way of transparency to the process, leaving one to wonder how the site verifies the customer's carbon offsets.
The criticisms of the voluntary market take strong roots in this venture-- of dubious science or the risk of "rip-offsets." MyEex's system is a welcome principle, but at first blush lacks credibility.
With the emissions trading scene posed for change, services like MyEex could be an impressive way to reduce emissions and actually make money. However, carbon markets can leave space for unverifiable tampering.
Illustration by Will Etling.
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