It’s rare that you’ll encounter a home owner today who says that if they had the option, they wouldn’t want to reduce their carbon emissions or reduce their energy consumption, and in turn, the costs of home ownership. The problem is, that in many cases, greener home technology is just out of reach of many North Americans because of the high costs that are still associated with the options available on the market. This has been the case with voltage optimization technology that can accomplish the above goals, but until recently, it’s only been attainable to large organizations looking to optimize their energy use because of cost. A UK company has decided to address this lapse in the industry by introducing the VPhase, an affordable voltage optimization technology for home owners.

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Air travel is a major contributor to climate change. Offsets are a small part of a larger solution.

Today at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) we are launching the Climate Passport program allowing travelers to offset the impact of their air travel through an airport kiosk. This will be the world’s first airport kiosk—giving people the opportunity to calculate the environmental impact of their flights and purchase carbon offsets to address that impact while at the airport.

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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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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

This is a promising development; especially considering that China will account for about 41% of all carbon credits issued by the year 2012. Still, the government refuses to accept quantitative emissions reduction targets, calling such goals "hard and unrealistic". They are, however, not holding back on honesty when it comes to making admissions about their contributions to global pollution. From the article,

Because we're a coal dominant country, we have to take responsibility for lowering greenhouse emissions," said Zhang. He added: "China plans to reduce its energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20% by 2010."

China's rapid growth will be a significant determinant in seeing some of these goals to fruition. Many analysts believe cutting energy consumption within such a short period of time is simply impossible for a country with run-away economic momentum. The International Energy Agency still expects China to overtake the U.S. in emissions by 2009; a race that nobody should be proud to win.

China's open admission of its environmental challenges is an interesting policy compared to the U.S. "wait and let technology save us" type-rhetoric. The question is, can a country with such massive growth do anything to curb energy consumption or resource depletion? Are they simply headed for a steep cliff at the top of a mountain?

Hit the article for more!