I’ve got good news and bad news when it comes to buying offsets for flights. The good news is that it’s easy. I used both myclimate and carbonfootprint to make the emissions calculations. They were simple, user-friendly, and allowed me to buy offsets after making the calculations. Even better, the two were in the same ballpark in their calculations. For a family of four flying indirect to Madrid, the first site produced an estimate of 16.1 tons and carbonfootprint roughly 18 tons (this assumes you check the box on the site to include radiative forcing, which I won’t get into here).
The downside is that the amount they suggested to buy the offsets is very different, with myclimate suggesting about $450 and carbonfootprint $140 at the low end. I assume differences occur due to the types of projects they run or support. Problem is, I have no idea if these projects are made equal. I’ll try to dig into it more, including who runs the two sites (both seemed to have reasonable credentials).
In the meantime, I resisted my urge to be super cheap and bought $239 for reforestation in Kenya, which I selected in part because I liked that it was a specific project rather than a contribution to a portfolio of projects (very scientific, I know).
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