www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/funonwheels/06/17/car_smog_pay -> www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/funonwheels/06/17/car_smog_pay/
FUN ON WHEELS So long to gas guzzler guilt Company allows drivers to pay for the smog they produce, then reduces it from other sources. Posted: 12:16 pm EDT (1616 GMT) By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN/Money staff writer RESEARCH A NEW CAR Get invoice and market prices, specs, reviews and photos.
Research All Used Cars NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - For $160 you can turn a Hummer H2 into a zero-emis sions vehicle. That's the promise of a California company called TerraPass. It would cos t less, of course, to turn a Chevrolet Cobalt into zero-emissions vehicl e That would only be about $40. The idea is the latest implementation in the trading of "pollution credit s" Those are the market-based innovations, introduced a few years ago, which allow smoke-spewing companies to buy and sell the right to emit ce rtain amounts of pollutants into the air. The stickers TerraPass sends its customers do nothing to stop pollutants from coming out of a car's tailpipe. Instead, the company offers its cus tomers the chance to reduce pollutants from other sources, like power pl ants, in an amount equivalent to that produced by their car. That way, you can drive your car while having no net effect on the amount of pollution in the air, the company says. The company started as a class project at the University of Pennsylvania' s Wharton School, said Tom Arnold, TerraPass's chief environmental offic er and sole full-time employee. He also has three students working for the company and a three-member adv isory board. The company is a for-profit enterprise, but caps its profits at a maximum of 10 percent of revenues. Those revenues so far, Arnold says, are "itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny." The com pany started selling TerraPasses in November and had sold about 620 as o f last week. If you buy a TerraPass, the money will be used to purchase smog allowance s on the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Climate Exchange allows polluting companies that produce less than a certain amount of airborne pollutant s to sell credits to other companies that then allow them to go over the limit. The overall limits are reduced over time making it more costly to exceed them. Organizations and companies that buy pollution credits reduce the overall supply of credits and also make it more costly for companies to exceed the limits. TerraPass also invests buyers' money in power-generating wind farms and o ther projects that reduce air pollution. Since car drivers are under no legal compulsion to try to compensate for their tailpipe emissions, the TerraPass will only appeal to those who fe el some guilt about their driving, and want to do something about it. Not surprisingly, few SUV drivers have been buying them. Most have gone t o owners of fuel-efficient cars that produce relatively few pollutants. "We fully expected to target SUV drivers with SUV guilt," he said. "It ju st doesn't exist" Instead, he's been travelling to environmental fairs pitching the idea to those who, for the most part, drive fuel efficient small cars and gas/e lectric hybrid vehicles. "Environmentalists have a very conflicted relationship with their cars," said Arnold.
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