ASUM donates to purchase green tags

ASUM recently decided to give $228 to the Students of Wilderness and Civilization program to purchase Green Tags to offset carbon emitted by bringing speakers to Missoula. This may leave some of us wondering, what exactly is a Green Tag?

Simply, it’s a donation to the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. BEF takes the money spent on a Green Tag and uses it to fund current renewable energy projects and to produce new wind and solar power plants. The Green Tags purchase would offset the carbon emissions of all the speakers for Students of Wilderness and Civilization’s spring lecture series.

According to Lisa Riehl, the Green Tag consumer program manager at BEF, people show their support by putting “their hard earned money towards green power.” The more support from the public that renewable resource project owners see, the more they want to increase the size of their projects.

The benefits of green power will be hugely noticeable when federal regulations are passed, Riehl said.

There are three types of Green Tags available: wind, wind and solar blend, and solar, like those ASUM purchased. These types range from $20 to $35 per Green Tag. No one type of power is better than the other. Riehl said people’s choice of power is mainly personal preference.

University of Montana environmental studies professor Vicki Watson said she buys Green Tags from BEF to offset her carbon emissions.

“We need to look at our lifestyles and choices and work on shrinking our footprint as much as possible,” Watson said. “Then purchase Green Tags for the emissions we cannot avoid.”

But not everyone sees carbon offsets as a positive development. A recent publication, “The Carbon Neutral Myth-Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins,” by the Transnational Institute, said that buying Green Tags is a way for people to feel like they are helping the environment, while in reality people are being distracted from the real problems and not solving it.

The BEF Web site has a carbon emission calculator that states how many Green Tags individuals could buy to offset the amount of greenhouse gases they release into the atmosphere each year. According to the carbon calculator, an average Missoula resident with two cars, who heats their house with electricity and takes two roundtrip flights each year would be responsible for releasing 38,103 pounds of greenhouse gases. To offset this emission a person would need to purchase 25.5 wind or 29.5 solar Green Tags, ranging from $510 to $1032.50.

According to the BEF, electricity is the leading industrial cause of air pollution in the United States. Traditional power sources emit carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere. These air pollutants contribute to global climate changes, while solar and wind power do not. Renewable energy facilities have decreased the amount of carbon dioxide pollutants generated throughout the nation.

In August of 2003, NorthWestern Energy in Missoula introduced a green power program, E+Green. Missoula residents can participate in the program by paying $2 extra per month for a block of Green Tags. Each block is 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity generated from renewable energy resources. This is an inexpensive way for residents to show their support for clean energy, said Patrick Judge, energy program director of the Montana Environmental Information Center.

“I think it is a good idea for people to make this direct investment in supporting more sustainable energy, since our current federal government is doing very little of this,” Watson said.