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Visitors travelling to the Winter Games could spend thousands on tickets, airfare and hotels – and now, for a few dollars more, they can buy the option to do it with a cleaner environmental conscience.

VANOC and Offsetters, a Vancouver-based carbon-offset company, announced a partnership yesterday they say allows people planning to travel to the Games to pay to offset their carbon impact with a few clicks.

For $65.27, a couple visiting Vancouver from Toronto during the 2010 Olympics would come out carbon neutral after flying to the Games, staying in a hotel for two weeks and taking in six events, according to a carbon calculator unveiled yesterday by Offsetters. For a family of four coming from Berlin via Toronto for a similar Games experience, the price tag for offsetting would be closer to $350.

“We're expecting hundreds of thousands of spectators, 250,000 extra travellers through YVR in the course of the Games, and an extra roughly 150,000 passenger movements a day just using our transit system,” said James Tansey, chief executive officer of Offsetters, which started in 2005. All of these visitors will be encouraged to calculate the carbon impact of their visit to Vancouver online, and cough up the cash to buy offsets.

For every tonne of carbon offset for the Games, the company will invest in clean-energy projects in British Columbia, Uganda, New Zealand and Turkey.

VANOC released a revised estimate of the carbon emissions of the Games prepared by the Centre for Sustainability and Social Innovation at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.

The updated forecasts predict a 267,100-tonne total carbon footprint for the 2010 Olympics. Offsetters will donate offsets for the 117,800 tonnes of carbon emissions attributed directly to VANOC, and sell offsets for the balance, generated by spectators' travel, to consumers and sponsors. So far, 25 sponsors out of 62, and regional governments have signed on.

This is a big opportunity for Offsetters, a company started in 2005 by Mr. Tansey and Hadi Dowlatabadi, both professors at the University of British Columbia.

“We consider it an investment in building our brand, and being a leader in the carbon market,” Mr. Tansey said.

The revised carbon footprint estimates do not include the construction of the Sea to Sky Highway, the rapid-transit Canada Line or the Vancouver Convention Centre, and come in at less than the 328,485 tonnes forecast in 2007 by the David Suzuki Foundation.