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Over the last few years IGIreland have been active in promoting green and
intelligent building to improve building performance in Ireland, see
our IGIreland website, www.igireland.ie.
We have done this through organising conferences, knowledge forums and
practically by building the first INTEGER house in Ireland.
However,
after seeing Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, we felt that we had
to do something more. More and more people are concerned about climate
change and the potentially catastrophic impacts it may have if we do
nothing to reduce our carbon emissions from fossil fuel use.
We
have created this not-for-profit website to enable people in Ireland to offset their
carbon emissions from driving, flying and home energy use and later it
will be extended to businesses and events. The process of voluntary
carbon offsets is complex so we have tried to make it easy for people
to make a difference.
Just put in your car or flight details and our Irish based carbon calculator will show you the amount of CO2 produced. This amount may be offset by contributing to the cost of a project that will help to reduce CO2 by about the same amount, as with tree planting, or will prevent that amount from being produced, as with insulation or solar panel projects.
Issues of transparency and verification
arise. This is why we have chosen to base our projects within Ireland
or with Irish based organisations, as much as we can, so that people
can see the difference they have made for themselves. In this way we
can all work together to create a zero-carbon Ireland.
"Offsetting"
is not the whole solution, nor is it an easy way out of the problem,
which is why we have stressed the 4 point process of auditing- finding
out how much energy you are using, reducing energy use, seeking
alternatives and finally offsetting what remains.
We are aware
that carbon offset schemes may be criticized. We are aware of these
issues and we will tackle them. All we can say is, This is what we are
doing. What are you doing? Click here for more details
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