April 13th, 2006
Flying The Earth-Friendly Skies - TripleE travel and emergency road service agency offers airline travel with zero net greenhouse gas emissions
Environmentally conscious air travelers might be interested in ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that result from their travel. TripleE (a travel and emergency road service agency) claims that they offer airline travel with zero net greenhouse gas emissions. TripleE and the Climate Neutral Network–a nonprofit corporation supported by an alliance of organizations committed to developing products and services with limited impact on the Earth’s climate–worked together to calculate the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from TripleE’s air travel services, find certifiable offset projects, and measure the amount of greenhouse gases saved by those projects. TripleE’s TravelCool air travel program was recently certified as “climate neutral,” that is, having “little or no effect on the Earth’s climate,” which can be achieved by reducing and offsetting the greenhouse gases associated with its production, support, and delivery. Methods for offsetting greenhouse gases include planting trees and investing in tech nologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as renewable energy, fuel-efficient vehicles, or energy-efficient lighting. TripleE established a portfolio of investment programs that offset the equivalent in carbon dioxide emissions from their passengers’ travel, which passengers can purchase shares of through TravelCool membership. According to the Climate Neutral Network, if 20 percent of just two airlines’ customers chose climate neutral travel, 40 million metric tons of greenhouse gases could be prevented from entering the atmosphere, equivalent to eliminating more than 8 million cars from U.S. roads for a year.