France Ecotours is one of the initiator and becomes involved in Atmosfair:

What is atmosfair?

Not everyone can or is willing to give up air travel – even if he or she knows that this kind of travel contributes to the greenhouse effect. For people who do care about the consequences of their air travel, a service has now been created: “atmosfair”.

How does atmosfair work?

The passenger pays voluntarily for the greenhouse gases that he or she causes to be released. The money is invested, for example, in solar, hydropower, biomass, or energy-efficiency projects to thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount whose affect on the climate would be comparable to the aircraft’s emissions. Your money helps make these projects possible.

Where does your money go?

At the Univesity of Rio waste now produces electricity – and in India kitchens in hospitals and temples enjoy clean solar energy. The projects do not only save the atmosphere emissions but they also create jobs.

Fly – and pay for the greenhouse gases
If you want to go to San Francisco, in theory you can go by ship. In reality, however, this option is available to almost no-one – aside from any other factors, most people can’t afford to spend that much time on just getting there and back. Instead, you can stay at home, choose another destination or fly. Not everyone can or is willing to give up air travel – even if he or she knows that this kind of travel is more damaging to the climate than any other means of transportation.
For people who do care about the consequences of their air travel, a service has now been created: “atmosfair”. With the help of an emissions calculator, this program calculates how much your flight contributes to global warming. Furthermore, it calculates how much it costs to save emissions elsewhere that have a comparable warming effect.
atmosfair customers can then pay the requisite amount of money to enable the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere whose global warming effect is comparable to that caused by the flight emissions.
The environmental damage caused by the flight cannot be undone – just as a filling cannot make a tooth whole. In both cases, however, it is better to try to fix the problem than hope that, by ignoring it, it will somehow solve itself.

Monitoring of funds

Monitoring alone can guarantee that the funds are used as they are intended to be, and to this purpose, international regulations have been developed. The operator of the climate protection project in the developing country must therefore spend a percentage of the budget on certification and monitoring. Exactly how much this amounts to in a particular case depends greatly on the project and the circumstances under which it is run. It is therefore not yet possible to quote exact figures here.
And how can you be sure that your money is invested in a climate protection project in a developing country? That’s easy: You can use the website of atmosfair – also in english version – to charge the amount to your credit card or you can transfer it directly from your bank to the atmosfair bank account. All incoming donations and the outgoing payments to the climate protection projects are monitored and documented by an independent auditor for atmosfair in its annual report. The first report is due for mid 2006 after the first business year of the atmosfair GmbH, founded in May 2005.

www.atmosfair.de