How does it work?
Problem: An average car covering 15,000km/year consumes 1.8 tons/year of CO2.
Solution: Carbon Technology reduction projects. These consist in reducing the CO2 emitted by an activity in a developing country, which has been occurring and would continue to occur without our intervention, also known as “business as usual”. If we then intervene, for example by replacing a diesel generator in an African school with a wind turbine we have in effect reduced the CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Thus taking the ideology behind the Kyoto “Clean Development Mechanism” one can claim that their additionality really reduces CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. However it should be made clear that we are doing this at a voluntary level and not as a Kyoto obligation.
The CO2 pollution problem is an international problem and the fact that these reductions mentioned above are not directly our own emissions, in our own country, is of little significance. Carbon pollution is not a local but a global problem.