Tour of California and 518 tons of carbon output

A common observation by bicycling environmentalists is that large cycling races produce tremendous quantities of greenhouse gases. The Tour of California, for example, will generate an estimated 518 tons of carbon dioxide from support vehicles, media vans, and cars and trucks driven by spectators and fans.

To offset this, Clif Bar announced they will purchase enough renewable energy credits to offset the CO2 produced during the Amgen Tour of California as part of their sponsorship of the eight day race. According to Clif Bar, the Tour of California will be the first-ever climate-neutral professional cycling race.

Other steps Clif will take to reduce the environmental impact of the Tour of California include:

* Establish on-site recycling and composting at the daily Healthy
Lifestyle Festival

* Offer Cool Tags at the Clif Bar booth in the Healthy Lifestyle
Festival. Through a Clif Bar partnership with NativeEnergy, race
spectators can purchase green tags to offset the amount of CO2 they
generate driving to and from the event. For each $2 Cool Tag(TM), an
attendee can offset approximately 300 miles of car travel

* Offer a bike valet area to encourage people to ride bikes instead of
drive cars to the race

* Provide organic CLIF(R) BAR energy bars and organic CLIF SHOT(R)
BLOKS(TM) energy chews at rider feed stations and for spectators. Clif
Bar has made a companywide commitment to organic agriculture. Organic
foods are made without synthetic pesticides, benefiting the environment
and the people who eat them

* Provide eco-friendly recommendations to hospitality companies and other
vendors in the Healthy Lifestyle Festival. Suggestions include using
biodegradable consumables such as plates and paper products

* Bring the Clif Bar Biodiesel Bus to the race to raise awareness of
cleaner burning fuels that reduce consumers' impact on global climate
change.

Regular readers of Cyclecious know I'm dubious of many "green" technologies that do little to nothing to reduce actual fossil fuel usage, but what Clif is doing is still cool. And I used the word "dubious" twice in one day!

Also mentioned at Groovy Green. I'm surprised Treehugger hasn't mentioned this yet.

Tags: tour+of+california, global+warming, carbon, carbon+dioxide, greenhouse, clif+bar, cycling, race, climate