Guest Author - Guido Deboeck

The average American household emits about 20 tonnes of CO2 per year. That is enough to fill four and a half Olympic swimming pools per year. Do you know what your CO2 footprint is? How you can counter the effect with clean energy credits?

Several calculators are now available on the web to calculate your carbon footprint. BP provides a carbon footprint calculator that is easy to use. Another one from the UK, provided by Carbon FootPrint Ltd, requires information on annual usages of gas, electricity, oil, and coal as well as annual estimates of mileage traveled via different vehicles. This month's Wired Magazine contains a Carbon Quiz that is quick to fill out.

Here is how you can get a quick back-of-the-envelope estimate. Anyone starts with 500 pounds of CO2 for trash generated per year. Depending on whether you live in an apartment in a large building, in a small building, in a single family attached home, or a single-family detached home, you add 8,000, 13,400, 14,700, or 15,500 pounds. These amounts should however be discounted by 30% if you heat with oil, or 40% if you heat with natural gas. Then there is the CO2 your car expels. For example, my 2003 Subaru Wagon WX which I drive about 9,000 miles per year (way below the average of 12,000 miles per year), expels approximately 7,200 pounds of green house gasses per year. Other land and air travel, depending on mileage and/or airplane trips you take add another 3,200 pounds. Finally, the origin of the food you buy -- own region, continent, or mostly from overseas—determines whether you should add 40, 233, or 3064 pounds respectively. A small discount of 50, 125, or 250 pounds can be subtracted from the grand total depending on your recycling habits.

My quiz results yielded 17 tonnes per year, which is less than the average for American households (18.58 tonnes), but still way above average European households (UK mainly) who are consuming just 10 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Once you know your carbon footprint, you can counter the effect by investing in clean energy credits. Each dollar donated to TerraPass , or to Carbonfund.org or to Climate Care buys roughly 256 pounds of clean energy. Donations to projects that create energy from renewable energy sources can fully offset your green house gas emissions. For example, my household 17 tonnes of green house gas emissions could be neutralized by an annual contribution of $148.74 to one of the above funds (17 tons is 17,272 kilograms which is 38,077 pounds divided by 256). It is that easy to be green...but the real challenge is of course to bring our CO2 footprint down, ideally even below the European average!

There are other investments you can make. A list of ideas to reduce your personal CO2 footprint is provided on the BP site. Some of these provide for tax credits (see related links).

Companies that invest in alternative energy sources include among others: Energy Conservation Device (ENER), FuelCell Energy (FCEL), Ballard Power Systems (BLDP), Console Energy (CNX), Foundation Coal Holdings (FCL), Peabody Energy (BTU), Alliance Resources (ARLP), Penn-Virginia Resources (PVR). Among these BTU, FCL, ARLP, and PVR have recently broken out.