We installed our grid-tied 10kW Bergey Excel in May, 2003, and — other than a blade switch-out in 2005 to boost production (which it did by more than 30 percent) — we’ve encountered no mechanical or electronic failures or issues. It’s a testament to how reliable some of the wind turbines and inverters have become. Since its installation, we’ve already generated over 48,000 kWhs (kilowatt hours) of renewable energy, presently averaging about 10,000 kWhs/year. Yep, our utility, Alliant Energy, then buys our surplus electricity back from us (it amounts to about $400 a year). According to calculations at Bergey Windpower Co., our 10 kW Bergey GridTek system will offset approximately 1.2 tons of air pollutants and 250 tons of greenhouse gases over its 30-year operating life.

This past September, we hired Kettle View Renewable Energy LLC to complete the replacement of leading-edge tape on each of the blades, tape which was pealing back or slid off altogether. The leading-edge tape helps protect the perfectly balanced fiber reinforced plastic blades — offering about twice the strength of low carbon steel. These Bergey Excel blades have a swept area diameter of 23 feet. Kettle View Renewable Energy, LLC is one of the hundreds of new companies that have started to meet the growing need of servicing renewable energy systems, completing renewable energy site assessments, grant writing and system installations.

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Sustainablog editor Jeff McIntire Strasburg did a great series last year on Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s “move to a greener business model” and I’ve followed up recently with posts on their addition of “hybrid branches” and the expansion of the Enterprise Ridesahare program in Atlanta. Not to inundate our readers with news from one organization, but if the news is continually positive, I think we should report it! Of particular note today is the opt-in carbon offset program started last year in partnership with TerraPass.

In the year since Enterprise started the program along with sister companies Alamo and National, more than 175,000 customers have opted to pay a $1.25 premium on their rental fee, generating $220,000 to help fund certified offset programs and making it the most popular customer opt-in carbon offset program in the country. With the company’s commitment to match those contributions dollar-for-dollar up to $ 1 million, the total contribution to the various offset programs has totaled $440,000.

“We believe this is the most popular consumer opt-in offset program in the travel industry and quite possibly any industry,” said Erik Blachford, chief executive officer of TerraPass. “It’s certainly the most popular program we’ve seen, and participation continues to grow.”

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White Lines factory reuses their carbon emissions in a closed loop, making for zero CO2 emissions, for one. Then they offset what they can’t reuse (transportation, etc) via planting trees in Africa, as coordinated by environmental consultancy U&W (interestingly pronounced “You & We” in Swedish) The wood used for the paper comes from locally sourced, sustainably managed forests, and woodchip waste from sawmills. And every package tells you the precise carbon footprint, the materials traced back to the source.

And then it gets interesting.

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Scott James is a frequent contributor to Planetsave. This is his first post on the Ecopreneurist.

Hi Everyone, I want to introduce you to the Carbon Advice Group. It is an international carbon offsetting venture that allows users to create their own carbon offset merchant sites. This site harnesses the spirit of social entrepreneurship in the drive to be carbon neutral by empowering anyone to set up their own personalized micro-site where they can provide carbon offsets to their family, friends or business colleagues.

Every person and business leaves a carbon footprint, perhaps most notably through travel or food consumption, and this site empowers people to take responsible action to offset the unavoidable emissions of everyday transactions. I especially like that the affiliate set-up lets people take the carbon offset message to their personal community/network/business and take a lead role in spreading that awareness. Here is a page that I set up as an example:  Scott on Carbon Advice Group.

“We want to motivate the average person in the street to get online, build their own site and get the message across to everyone they know,” says serial Social Entrepreneur and Carbon Advice Group founder Matthew Sullivan.

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Has reality set in yet? Kids, job, partner, just doesn’t equal farm bliss. Well listen up and take heed. You can now, partially, live out your dream of running away to tend sheep with a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share from Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm.

With a share in the Farm you buy into the Farm and have a stake in its success. The goal is to have yarn or bats for spinning at the end of the process, but you get so much more. You have access to Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm’s blog, where there are updates on the farm’s goings on. A weekly email update, invites to shearing parties and a chance to visit the farm and help out. This is after all, part your farm!

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It makes sense. We all know white reflects heat (that’s why we wear white shirts and dresses on hot days), and we even knew that painting rooftops white lessens the need for air conditioning. But until now, we didn’t know that changing dark-colored surfaces to white would help fight against global warming.

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Worldchanging magazine has announced that it is selling the ultimate environmentalist gift for high school and college graduates: carbon offsets for life.

This means that for every donation above a certain level, Worldchanging will buy carbon offsets in the name of the graduate.

But the price of this gift is not cheap—the minimum donation is $6,000 to offset a graduate’s childhood, and the max is $25,000 to offset an entire career. It also raises an important question: what will such a present do to the mindset of the recipient?

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Paso del Istmo is a 20 kilometer-long land bridge in Nicaragua. Conservationists believe that the narrow strip of tropical forest could absorb some 170,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases over the next 40 years. What’s more, carbon offsets might make these forests worth more as trees than as lumber.

For millennia, the land bridge has been a corridor allowing animal migration between North and South America. It now has some of the most highly concentrated biodiversity in Nicaragua. Conservation group, Paso Pacifico, wishes to permanently protect the land bridge from developers, but where could they find funding to make this dream a reality?

Enter the carbon offset company, CarbonFund. In league with Paso Pacifico and the Rainforest Alliance, carbon offsets offer the funding to make conservation of the Paso del Istmo land bridge a reality; and they’re not stopping at just conservation.

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Like corporate social responsibility (CSR), you find yourself semi-exhausted before the next sentence.

You sense inherent good in each of these phrases – sure – but just want them to make sense in a realer world.

And so to the VCS.

Voluntary carbon offsetting is big business. In 2006, there was a huge surge in this market resulting in a 200% growth.

Big brands were, and are, getting into carbon offsetting in a big way. Google, Nike, Coca Cola, Yahoo! – all are now part of this market.

I don’t think it at all beneficial at this stage to analyse their reasons for announcing green credentials. Whether it really is genuine CSR or in each case a PR exercise is redundant. Don’t muddy the waters. They’re doing it.

So, yes, multinationals are offsetting their carbon within the voluntary sector. Good.

But what’s drawing them to the market? Two reasons.

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This weekend at the Sasquatch! Music Festival in Washington, you can hear the likes of Bjork, The Arcade Fire, Manu Chao and the Beastie Boys. And if you listen closely, you might also hear the sigh of atmospheric relief as Carbon Harmony neutralizes the effects of all carbon dioxide emmissions resulting from this year’s Sasquatch!

You may remember from my previous post that the United States produced at least 6,008.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2005 alone. With a number this outstanding, how can music fest lovers feel rest assured they won’t add to it when they make the trek out to see their favorite bands?

With Carbon Harmony, a festival can actually neutralize its carbon footprint and then some by calculating its carbon emmissions and then purchasing “a larger amount of carbon reduction credits” to actually lower the total amount of CO2 in the ozone layer. This allows for a festival to not just prevent further global warming, but to actually contribute to the growing movement in global cooling.

“Carbon neutral is a start,” says founder John Humphrey. “That gets you to zero. But why not go a step beyond and reduce the overall amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?”

Founded by Sustainable Energy Partners, Carbon Harmony begins by purchasing 10% more carbon reduction credits than you need to neutralize your carbon footprint. With the Carbon Harmony mindset of “Why stop at neutral?” you can choose to go above and beyond with as many carbon credits as you want.

To see how you can be a part of a more carbon neutral music experience, visit http://carbonharmony.com

The site was launched in conjunction with the upcoming release of Universal's new comedy, Evan Almighty. The domain name, GetOnBoardNow.com is in reference to the movie in which Evan (Steve Carrell) is called upon by God (Morgan Freeman) to build an ark to save the world from an impending flood (check out the trailer.)

GetOnBoardNow.com visitors are invited to plant a virtual tree (for $5). That donation will go toward The Conservation Fund's efforts to plant real trees to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Anyone can take a video game-like tour through the virtual landscape, accompanied by a soundtrack of birds and a faint breeze. Each tree comes with a name tag, bulletin board and optional birdhouse. The site also offers green news "snippets" (which haven't been updated since April 21) and a carbon calculator.

This partnership falls in line with the production of Evan Almighty, which took part in The Conservation Fund's Go Zero program to offset their carbon footprint by planting trees. Evan Almighty director, Tom Shadyac (who also directed the Jim Carey movie Bruce Almighty) also gave the crew bikes to reduce the use of cars and donated all landscaping, lumber, windows and other reusable set construction leftovers to Habitat for Humanity.

Everyone who plants a tree before the movie hits theaters on June 22 will get their name included on the DVD.

Well wonder no more! This past month, our country witnessed another first in the world of green when Northern California’s KQED became the first ever carbon neutral public broadcasting station. For those of you new to the world of carbon offsets, this simply means that KQED is taking significant steps to reduce its climate footprint by neutralizing its net amount of carbon emissions through purchasing carbon credits and increasing a company-wide participation in green production practices.

But this is no easy feat! As KQED recently announced in a public statement, going carbon neutral included "establishing a baseline reading of carbon emissions and determining the amount of energy used in daily operations, from production vans, to transmitter towers, to the electricity used in the building. Carbon credits of the same amount were then purchased from the Chicago Climate Exchange, to promote energy efficiencies in other companies, or to be used towards renewable energy sources like wind power and bio-gas.”

On April 21, KQED will conduct a green pledge day to help support the effort in neutralizing the net total of this year's carbon emissions(!) Tune in from April 15 to Sunday April 22 for a weeklong Earthday celebration with KQED’s latest in noncommercial green tv and radio programming. Visit www.kqed.org/earthweek for an advance schedule. Also, if you’re interested in reducing or offsetting your own (or your company’s) carbon emissions, visit www.driveneutral.org/ for more info.

Finally, for anyone outside the Bay Area who’s interested in hearing more from KQED, a live webstream is always available at www.KQED.org.