What is carbon offsetting?
Carbon offsetting is the act of reducing carbon emissions in order to compensate (or offset) emissions made elsewhere. For example, if you drive a car, it produces carbon dioxide emissions, which can negatively impact our planet. If reducing the amount of driving you do isn’t an option, you can instead purchase a carbon offset. This allows you to reduce carbon equal to the amount of carbon you are creating. Carbon offsets, often referred to as carbon offset credits, are used to fund carbon reducing programs like renewable energy, methane gas collection, energy efficiency programs and land use programs like forest planting, forest retention and soil management which includes capturing or increasing carbon in soil.
By offsetting the carbon you create, you can minimize your carbon footprint and get closer to being carbon neutral. Carbon neutral means you have balanced your carbon footprint to zero by reducing and offsetting carbon.
If you’re new to carbon offsetting it’s easy to get overwhelmed by calculating the carbon you make, even with an online carbon foot print calculator. Thankfully, we’re taking the guess work out of it. When you buy home heating oil with American Energy Supply, you’ll have the option to purchase a carbon offset for 100 gallons of oil. No calculations needed. Buying more than 100 gallons? Add more than one offset to your order.
We’ll do the rest by paying into a carbon offset program with the full proceeds of your carbon offset purchase. We’re not making money off these credits, instead our goal is to offer you an easy solution to order carbon neutral home heating oil and minimize your carbon footprint.
Your carbon foot print is the total amount of emissions and gases caused by you, your actions and lifestyle. Things that effect the size of your carbon footprint are both big and small. It includes your energy consumption such as heating oil and electricity, water, trash and waste, travel, and gas, food consumption, product consumption, services and even things like construction and building.
Basically anything that uses energy, used energy to create or produces carbon dioxide, methane, or other heat trapping gasses when it breaks down. The food you eat used tons of carbon and water to grow it, more to clean and cook it and if any ends up in the trash can produce gases in landfills. As you can see this can make calculating one’s carbon footprint extremely difficult. Thankfully there are tons of carbon foot print calculators available so we don’t have to do hard calculations.
The decision to offset carbon from your heating oil is a choice you have to make for yourself. Offsetting and reducing carbon, can help stabilize growing seasons and prevent negative effects of emissions on our planet. The best part is, we’ll all have cleaner air to enjoy for generations to come.
If you’re looking for a better way than carbon offsetting, we offer BioDiesel, an environmentally safe renewable fuel, suitable for indoor home heating tanks. Most heating systems require little to no upgrades to use it and it can even improve your furnace’s performance.
Ordering smart
The easiest and cheapest way to reduce carbon from heating with oil is in how you order oil. By ordering a complete fill when your tank is low at 1/4 tank ensures we’re only on the road as much as we need to be, preventing carbon emissions from our trucks used in delivery.
Energy efficiency
Reducing your energy bill means less carbon. There are tons of ways to make sure your home is efficient. We recommend starting with an annual cleaning and tune up to make sure your equipment is operating at it’s best. Give our team a call to schedule service. Be sure to review our list of ways to maximize your heating bill and our recommended products HERE.
Eating local
Another great way to reduce carbon is to buy and eat local produce and food. By supporting local farmers, bakers, farmer markets and even hunting local game, you’re reducing the travel, processing and packaging of food items. You’re also helping the local economy by keeping your hard earned money local, instead of buying from a huge chain based in a different state or country.
Gardening
Growing your own food is not only enjoyable, its a great way to reduce emissions because growing, harvesting, processing, packaging and shipping commercial vegetables and food creates a huge amount of carbon. When you grow your own, you eliminate a ton of carbon and the kids might enjoy it too. You can even go a step further and compost kitchen food scraps to use in your garden.