Silver Spring Grand Prix goes Carbon Neutral

Clean Currents, a local sustainably-operated clean energy business, is providing offsets to make the Silver Spring Grand Prix bicycle race in July carbon neutral. The Clean Currents Cycling Team is the host of the race.

Comments

[Chris]

That's not the only race which they're trying to make carbon neutral. The Carl Dolan Memorial Crit to be held on April 22 is sponsored by the same team and will also be carbon neutral.

[Grendel]

"purchase clean energy credits"--How do you do that? Where does the money go? How is it used to clean the air? Inquiring minds and all that...

[Purple Eagle]

Credits are usually used to either invest in carbon sequestration (eg planting trees which removed CO2 from the air) or (more commonly) to invest in wind and solar energy, which don't produce CO2.

[washcycle]

As I understand it, it works like this. A clean energy producer (like a wind farm) produces X watts of power. They then sell the power and credits for it to power distribution companies. The power gets mixed in with other power but the credits can be sold to people who want them. A power distribution company can't sell credits for clean power it didn't buy. So if more people ask for credits than the company has, then the power distribution company has to either tell them no or buy more clean power - possibly at a higher cost.
Then market economics come into play. If there are more people demanding clean energy credits than credits available, the price of clean energy goes up encouraging more energy companies to get into the business.

[Joshua Goldstein]

what a fantastic site. do you know a similar one for the boston area by chance?

goldstein dot joshua at gmail dot com

thanks!

[washcycle]

The closest thing I know of is massbike.

http://www.massbike.org/

[washcycle]

I happen to be doing research on this for one of my classes. Here's a quick link...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tags#Use_of_RECs_to_Claim_Carbon_Neutrality