Tom is still suspicious of the whole idea of "buying your way to carbon neutrality," so I have been continuing to research companies that we might invest in directly. There is actually a website that has lists of various companies around the world that are publicly traded. Companies are organized by the type of alternative energy they are working on - wind, solar, methane, even tidal power. The problem comes in trying to find the time to read through the information about each company.

For instance, there is one company that seems to have a potentially great idea to harness the power of the ocean tides to generate energy. Sounds great, but while reading through more material, it turns out that the energy generating devices are giant bouys located a ways out to sea, and then cabled back to the mainland so the energy can flow back to where it is needed. My instinct told me that they have to work a few things out before we invest there.

About 12 years ago, Tom & I bought stock in a solar energy company - the stock price was low - about $6 per share - and the company seemed solid. They had done some pretty impressive installations in California, and were getting a lot of good press in the investment world. When the stock hit $40 a share, we were advised to sell, but decided to keep it. Alas, we should have heeded the advice. The company went bankrupt a couple of years ago, apparently because of some greedy executives, and now we might get something like 14 cents a share as a settlement.

That's part of the reason why investing directly in a publicly traded company scares me. There is such a strong motive to increase profits to meet shareholder expectations, and to meet or exceed analyst predictions, that I suspect fraud is more common than we know.

In my research, I found yet another company with a calculator that offers ways for individuals and businesses to make investments in becoming carbon neutral. The company is called The CarbonNeutral Company, and has been around about 15 years. They will work with companies to verify their carbon offsets, and help qualify them to trade carbon credits on the Climate Exchange (if I understood the information I read).