CenterPoint Energy Services Offering Carbon Neutral Gas Supply

Retail natural gas supplier CenterPoint Energy Services recently launched a "carbon-neutral" natural gas product, called Green Balance.

CenterPoint Energy Services said that the program allows customers to offset all or a portion of their carbon emissions created during natural gas combustion through the purchase of green credits (aka carbon credit or carbon offset), equal to the reduction, sequestration or avoidance of one metric tonne of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases.

For total carbon neutrality, CenterPoint Energy Services said that the program typically increases a customer's natural gas costs by 10 to 15 percent (assuming 100 percent offset of carbon emissions).

CenterPoint Energy Services offers the carbon neutral product in all of its gas markets.

The cost appears as a separate line item on the monthly natural gas invoice.

CenterPoint Energy Services said that it created Green Balance in response to customer feedback.

The green credits used to offset a customer's emissions will be sourced from greenhouse gas reduction projects through a partnership with Element Markets, LLC, a Houston-based environmental credit marketing and project development company. All green credits are sourced from voluntary carbon emissions reduction projects that meet nationally recognized standards, CenterPoint Energy Services said. Reduction projects include the destruction of industrial pollutants, the repurposing of landfill methane and the use of anaerobic lagoons for energy generation.

CenterPoint Energy Services, the competitive natural gas sales and services division of CenterPoint Energy, Inc., has more than 25,000 commercial, industrial and utility customers across 20 states