I think it's useful to look what happens at the margin. If you are connected to the grid, or could be reasonably connected, all the power you use comes from the

I think it's useful to look what happens at the margin. If you are connected to the grid, or could be reasonably connected, all the power you use comes from the source with the highest marginal costs in the region. Most of the time in most places, that means a power plant burning fossil fuels. If the demand goes down permanently, that power plant will be the first to shut down. If you buy existing clean energy to compensate for your emissions, overall emissions will remain the same, no matter which hacks or accounting tricks you use. That clean energy would be produced and sold anyway, because the marginal costs are so low. If you can't avoid emissions and want to compensate them, you must invest in new renewable capacity that replaces fossil fuels somewhere.