Carbon Neutral Footprint

Making your business carbon neutral may be the most trendy marketing tool you can use this year. A swath of companies , from independent to sustainable to global supergiant have all made the commitment to offset their entire energy omission recently.

Earlier this year News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch announced that his media network would become carbon neutral by 2010, and search engine Google made the commitment to do it by the end of this year. In the UK leading high street chain Marks and Spencer pledged.

And it’s not only the traditional idea of businesses undergoing the change. Tim Flannery’s climate change book The Weathermakers was ‘neutralised’ thanks to Byron Bay’s Climate Friendly (www.climatefriendly.com) as were Missy Higgins and The John Butler Trio. Music fans earlier this year paid an extra 50 cents per ticket for The John Butler Trio’s Hordern pavilion concert. Nine out of ten fans chose the ticket which saw 50 cents invested in renewable energy programs.

Figures suggest the carbon offset trade is worth around US $100 million a year and growing. A report in the UK’s Financial Times puts the price much higher, estimating, ‘The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.’

Climate Friendly in Byron Bay, NSW, has assisted a host of companies to go carbon neutral since it opened, including Greenpeace, The Australian Conservation Foundation, and Westpac.

Speaking for Climate Neutral, Blair Palese said, ‘It is possible for any business of any size to become carbon neutral. If you are a small business you can just use the calculators, but if you are larger business involving products or services, or employee packages we can calculate your footprint. We can also calculate conferences and events. From there we easily calculate how much it would cost to offset your emissions.

Climate Friendly invest in a number of renewable energy sources; wind, solar electric (PV), solar thermal, as well as micro hydro (low-impact), geothermal, ecologically sound biomass, biogas, biofuels, and landfill gas to energy.

Palese explains, ‘People can choose a mix of things; they can choose to buy all green power, or they can choose a fifty-fifty mix.

We buy gold standard credits internationally; they are from renewable energy and from an accredited source, so they are usually considered to be of the highest calibre.’

Climate Friendly buy their Gold Standard credits from places such as Te Apiti wind farm in New Zealand. Te Apiti generates electricity for up to 45,000 average homes with no harmful greenhouse gas emissions and will do so for over 20 years.

Many of their existing customers are on GreenPower from the Challicum Hills Wind Farm in western Victoria. One of Australia’s largest wind farms, the project generates enough clean electricity to power 26,000 homes each year and has created significant employment, investment and tourism opportunities in the region.

Challicum Hills avoids the emission of 180,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas each year, and will reduce greenhouse pollution by more than 4.5 million tonnes over its 25-year life.

They also purchase GreenPower from a Western Australian wind farm operated by Verve Energy. The Denham Wind and Diesel System is one of the most advanced wind turbine projects of its type in the world. It saves 550,000 litres of diesel and 1,700 tonnes of carbon dioxide greenhouse emissions annually.

But critics argue that carbon nuetralising schemes may be just another way for voracious consumers to salve their conscience, or even worse, nothing more than a trendy fad.

Climate emissions are still a problem. Australians are the highest emitters per capita in the world, and governments are not all committing to cut levels enough to please environmental groups.

The problem lies partly in the fact that offsetting your emissions is quite different from cutting, curbing or simply stopping them. Public figures like Higgins have come under fire for speaking out about climate change while enjoying ‘jet setting’ lifestyles. But it should be remembered that for every megawatt generated by a renewable energy site, there is one unit of coal power that was never generated. So not only does renewable energy not add to global warming, in enough quantities it can help to slow it.

Also, at present it is proving difficult to regulate the myriad companies setting up to offset emissions. The UK’s Financial Times conducted an investigation and claimed to have found ‘widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.’ They also reported

• Industrial companies profiting from doing very little or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.

• Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.

• A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.

• Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.

Francis Sullivan, environment adviser at HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank that went carbon-neutral in 2005, said he found "serious credibility concerns" in the offsetting market after evaluating it for several months.

"The police, the fraud squad and trading standards need to be looking into this. Otherwise people will lose faith in it," he said.

According to the authors of the article, Fiona Harvey and Stephen Fidler, these concerns led the bank to ignore the market and fund its own carbon reduction projects directly.

Climate Friendly recommends investing in schemes where it is easy to understand the benefits, such as renewable energy. When Google decided to go carbon neutral this year they planned to purchase offsets only as a short term goal. Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President of Operations, said ‘We see carbon offsets not as a permanent solution but rather as a temporary tool which allows us to take full responsibility for our impact right away. By investing in projects elsewhere in the world that cut the overall amount of greenhouse gases, we can help reduce climate impact now while we develop more sustainable strategies for the future.’

It may be the case that unregulated companies will offer poor services, but carbon neutrality is big business, and any company attempting to lower their carbon footprint should be well considered.

Rupert Murdoch said going carbon neutral was a way to draw public attention and support to the issue. ‘We must transform the way we use energy … this is about changing the DNA of our business,’ he said. He also drew attention to his customers and the responsibility of us as individuals, saying, ‘Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours.’

His plans include switching to energy saving light bulbs and solar powered golf carts on the Fox Studios lot in Hollywood, and using renewable energy in the studio that produces TV series 24. Hybrid vehicles are replacing fleet cars at News Digital Media, and Mr Murdoch switched to a hybrid car himself.