The Skinny on Kyoto

By request (and because I haven’t blogged in over a month), I’ve been asked to explain the Kyoto Protocol and what it asks of the international community.

This subject actually falls in line with who I’m working for now – Planktos. Because of the Kyoto Protocol (and maybe the intended by-product of the accords), a whole new industry was created because of the demand for a carbon offset market.

I’ll explain the simplest way I can (with personal opinions staying on the sideline):

The Kyoto accord calls for industrialized nations to offset their CO2 emissions by lowering their CO2 output to an acceptable preset level, and if not or unable to because of economics, to purchase “carbon credits”. Carbon credits are produced by companies like Planktos by sequestering carbon dioxide – basically just pulling CO2 from the air and preventing it from re-entering the atmosphere. There are many ways to do this. The most recognizable and most accepted way is to plant more trees, but there are other, wackier ideas like creating a sulfate barrier from the sun to lower global temperature (basically mimicking a volcanic eruption but on a global scale).

In Planktos’ case, we are utilizing a proven technique called iron fertilization to sequester carbon. It’s a technique that has 20 years worth or research backing it.

In turn and once these credits are validated by an international standard (Kyoto), they are sold to nations or companies on a carbon market to offset emission that go over a preset standard as established by Kyoto.

What does this mean for the US you ask? Even though we don’t adhere to the accords, a majority of the companies in the US voluntarily lower their carbon emissions. Plus, this has given us the opportunity to explore more seriously the alternatives to fossil fuels.

Either way, the brief and short sum of it is that the Kyoto Protocol asks the world to stabilize greenhouse gasses by any and every means possible.

To get more info on Kyoto, you can go here: The Kyoto Protocol

ER