I’m a firm believer that all real change starts from within, but when it comes to reducing corporate emissions, does it make the most business sense to start from within by reducing emissions internally or to outsource it by purchasing carbon offsets?

Outsourcing makes sense when you can get a service done cheaper or faster elsewhere than it can be done in-house. The same basic principle is at work behind offsets. The amount of emissions reduced is the same but it’s much cheaper to reduce those emissions in China or South Africa than it is to reduce your company’s emissions in New Jersey.

Makes sense, right? If you’re trying to improve your image by reducing emissions, why not just purchase the offsets that would be required to reduce them? It comes down to the quality of the service. Would you outsource a service for your company if you were unsure of the quality of the service you would be receiving? Though efforts continue to be made for greater standardization, questions remain about the validity of many of the voluntary offsets that have been purchased and sold to date in the United States due to a lack of uniformity around methodology, monitoring, and verification.

The case for starting from within starts to look even better when you consider the fact that many of the companies that have made internal efficiency improvements for emissions reduction are not only improving their corporate images, but are also saving money. According to the PEW Center’s “7 Habits of Highly Efficient Companies”, Dow Chemical estimates that its energy efficiency efforts have saved the company $8.6 billion since 1994 while simultaneously avoiding roughly 86 million tons of carbon emissions. Although there is up front investment required (as would also be the case with purchasing offsets), the cost savings can find companies both “doing good and doing well”.