On January 8th, America’s Federal Trade Commission held a workshop on carbon offsets. This echoed UK government consultations earlier this year on creating a Code of Best Practice for the offsetting industry.

The workshop in Washington DC focused on consumer protection. In other words: How can offset buyers ensure they aren’t being deceived?

Three offset providers participated directly in the session: Carbonfund.org (a non-profit in Maryland), TerraPass (a for-profit in San Francisco) and Renewable Choice Energy (a for-profit in Colorado, not listed in Carbon Catalog since they don’t sell online).

Both Carbonfund.org and TerraPass welcome transparent guidelines for the industry. Their full responses are here and here. Reputable providers are understandably troubled that the misdeeds of some resellers could tar the industry as a whole.

Other interesting write-ups include the New York Times and the Heritage Foundation. The latter seem to think that all carbon trading is unworkable. Let’s hope this means they support a carbon tax instead.

Until the governmental great and wise come up with their official guidelines, there are several ways you can assess carbon offsets for yourself:

• Provider Transparency. Check out the website of providers you’re considering. Are they up front and open about their structure and goals? Are they clear about how your money gets spent? Do they provide adequate information on the people running the show? And do those people sound both honest and competent?

• Project Quality. The provider websites should give details of the projects they are supporting, including time frames and carbon quantities. Most projects are not implemented directly by the provider, so you should also find out who’s responsible on the ground.

• Verification and Certification. Has an independent third party verified the project’s validity? Has the project been certified for the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol? In either case the documents should be available - preferably online, but at least on request.

To save you time, the listings at Carbon Catalog include a lot of this information. What else do you think we should show?