Dalene chose to offset 100 percent of HLH’s 156-metric-ton footprint (for 2008) at a cost of $2.75 per metric ton. “It was surprisingly less costly than we anticipated. The price of offsets are really cheap overall [right now],” Dalene notes. “So it’s a good time for people to start doing this and get used to doing it.”
Custom builder Robert Soens, founder of Pinnacle Custom Homes in Decatur, Ga., also found the price of offsets “extremely reasonable.” “If you’re already running a fairly green operation, the little bit of additional cost it takes to go through the audit and purchase your offsets to make you carbon neutral is not that much,” he says.
Soens, who specializes in building green homes and in green renovations, was considering his efforts to green his company and thought he’d done everything he could on the emissions-reduction front, including dramatically scaling back his transportation footprint by doing only local jobs, working from a home office, reducing material waste on projects, and building to LEED, EarthCraft House, and Energy Star guidelines.
“We have the smallest carbon footprint possible, but even doing everything that we can, we’re still not 100 percent carbon neutral on our own. So buying the carbon offsets was just the final way of achieving that,” Soens says.
While researching the potential of carbon offsets, he read about Verus’ work with a neighborhood business association in Atlanta, was intrigued, and contacted the company. From Verus’ audit, Soens discovered that Pinnacle’s year 2008 carbon footprint totalled about 19 metric tons, much of which was generated from transportation to jobs and conferences in addition to office operations.
Both Soens and Dalene intend to continue offsetting their companies’ carbon footprints, and Dalene and his partners are already tracking their current year’s energy usage in preparation for their next evaluation.
“We’re emitting CO2, and no matter how much we try to mitigate, we’ll always emit CO2,” Dalene says. “What we can’t mitigate, we offset. It shows our community that we’re walking our talk.”
Most of Verus’ clients choose to support a local project, according to Andrew Keenan, Verus’ sales and marketing director. “But any offset accomplishes the same goals, whether they’re next door or in China, India, or Australia,” he adds. “They all have an impact on greenhouse gases, which affect us all.”
Dalene selected an agricultural methane capture project operated by a family dairy farm in Georgia. “We chose a methane capture project because we wanted to get the biggest bang for our buck,” Dalene says.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, methane is 21 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than CO2, and its ability to hang around the atmosphere for nine to 15 years makes it a prime candidate for climate change mitigation activities. The project Dalene selected harvests the methane from the dairy’s cow manure and uses it to generate electricity that is recycled back into the farm’s operations; the excess power is sold to the local utility.
Soens elected to offset 100 percent of Pinnacle’s footprint with the same agricultural methane capture project as a way to balance his use of a gas-powered vehicle in getting from job to job. For Soens it’s important to green not only the houses he works on, but also how he accomplishes that work.
“Home builders and renovators have one of the most unique opportunities at the moment because such a tremendous amount of greenhouse gases and waste come from not only operating homes but building and renovating them,” he says. “I think as an industry we have a tremendous role to play in making the world a better place, so it’s great to make every use of that opportunity possible.”
For a guide to carbon offsets, download “Consumers Guide to Carbon Offsets,” (PDF) published in 2006 by Clean Air – Cool Planet.
