There’s a new carbon offset program that will help you castoff the “emissions guilt” you experience when you rent a car.  In the year since its inception, Alamo Rent A Car, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and National Car Rental have seen combined, more than 175,000 customers participate in this carbon emissions offset program.  By paying $1.25 per rental, customers generated $220,000 for offset projects. In addition, the car rental companies’ charitable arm has matched the contribution, for a total of nearly $440,000 funds that will be directed to offset projects, part of the companies’ commitment to match customers’ offset purchases, dollar for dollar, up to $1 million.  Innovative green retailer and reseller of energy offset products, TerraPass, manages the certified offset programs funded by the voluntary contributions.

In the program’s first year, more than 42,000 metric tons of carbon have been offset.  Based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards, that’s equivalent to saving 4.8 million gallons of gasoline and 98,000 barrels of oil.  The funded CO2 offset programs include: farm power projects that turn animal waste into electricity, and gas-capture projects that trap and destroy methane gas produced by landfills, and the largest of the TerraPass-funded projects so far, the Worcester County Landfill Gas to Energy Project on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that is one of the nation’s first projects to be validated under the internationally recognized Voluntary Carbon Standard.