During this winter’s holiday break, I decided to try and make my home based web design business green. My hosting company, DreamHost, was green, so how hard could this be?

My first step was to see how DreamHost obtained their claim of “green” and “carbon-neutral”. Their green webpage showed a certificate issued by “TheGreenOffice.com”. It had a bunch of impressive logos on it and looked super duper official, so I went over to TheGreenOffice.com to see what was there.

I used their carbon footprint calculator and found out how many carbon-offsets I needed to purchase and added them to my cart. That’s when it became clear that it’s not Easy Being Green.

My experience with buying carbon offsets through their online store didn’t go so well. First off, my browser gave me a warning that the shopping cart was not secure. Then they tried to charge me shipping, even though nothing would be shipped. Then the 1-800 number didn’t work. I got cold feet and went in pursuit of other solutions for greening my business.

I Googled “carbon offset fraud” and found 269,000 results. Yikes. Although many were articles in blogs that were decidedly in the “man isn’t causing global warming and shouldn’t do anything to fix it” camp, a few were not. I found a good article on NPR called “Carbon Offsets: Government Warns of Fraud Risk“. It had this great quotation that really emphasized the need for conservation and development of clean energy sources:

“Some liken carbon offsetting to the now-defunct practice of buying indulgences for your sins from the Pope. It means paying someone else to reduce their carbon emissions so you don’t have to cut your own.”

The NPR article also had a link to “A consumer’s guide to retail carbon offset providers” - over 40 pages long! Apparently the Federal Trade Commission had a big workshop on “Eco in the Market - Carbon Offsets and Renewable Energy Credits.” Seems like even the FTC is concerned with carbon offset fraud in the booming eco-indulgence market.

While I found lots of information regarding the issues surrounding the carbon offset market, I didn’t find a current list of approved suppliers. So I turned to my own electric company, Seattle City Light. Turns out they have a program called “Green Up” and I signed up for it. This would mean that all of the electricity I used would be from renewable sources (by purchasing renewable energy certificates, or REC’s). Very inexpensive, only $12 per month, such a deal! More importantly, we also signed up for a free home energy audit to learn what we can to do conserve. So we’ll have less carbon to offset.

Next I dealt with the issue of my furnace oil. While we’re currently using a 30% bio blend, I’m still not sure whether switching to 100% is better or not - I found quite a bit of controversy. Regardless, I needed to purchase carbon offsets for oil. So I did some more research on Seattle City Light’s website. I learned that there’s a company called “green-e.org” that certifies retail energy offset products. According to a Green-e press release on Feb 13, 2008:

“Green-e Climate is the nation’s first certification program for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions (carbon offsets) sold to consumers on the retail market. This consumer-protection program strengthens the voluntary market by providing credible oversight of and transparency to retail offset products. Consumers purchasing Green-e Climate Certified offsets have clear information about the projects their GHG reductions are sourced from, and are guaranteed that offsets have not been double sold or double counted. The program verifies that a seller’s supply of offsets equals their sales, that GHG reductions are independently certified and verified, and that consumer disclosures are accurate.”

That sounded pretty good. And if Seattle City Light was touting Green-e, it was good enough for me. I learned that one of the certified companies was Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), based in Oregon, which is relatively close to Seattle. I could use BEF’s calculator and purchase the carbon-offsets I need for my oil usage and be finished! But I wanted a fancy certificate like DreamHost so I went back to looking at TheGreenOffice. (Note that in the end, I ended up buying carbon offsets from BEF and they provided me with a lovely green certificate in addition to a seal that I could use on my website. Very nice!)

Now, on TheGreenOffice.com’s website, they claim to purchase their REC/Carbon-offsets from BEF. Even DreamHost’s certificate showed the BEF logo. But when I contacted BEF and asked if TheGreenOffice was a client, they initially said no. But then they did some further investigation and found that TheGreenOffice.com said they purchase from another company called Sustainable Travel International and that company buys from BEF. Getting confused?

Here’s the theoretical carbon-offset food chain:

Renewable Energy -> BEF -> STI -> GreenOffice -> consumer

So there were two middlemen in between the actually green-e certified company, BEF, and me, the consumer of the carbon offset. Wow. And remember they’re all involved in buying and selling, well, nothing, and the feds don’t regulate the new carbon offset / renewable energy certificate market even as well as they do the stock market or banking industry.

When you purchase a carbon-offset, you don’t actually get anything except peace of mind that you’re supporting renewable energy production, so the source is critical.

Now maybe this whole carbon-offset reselling and re-reselling and re-re-reselling is all legitimate, but an industry that is not selling anything tangible is just a sitting duck for fraud. How easy would it be to buy 10 offsets and sell 1000? Where’s the accountability? Remember TheGreenOffice didn’t even mention anywhere on its website it was actually purchasing from Sustainable Travel International - why? Maybe because STI isn’t green-e certified and BEF is. I don’t know for sure. And why was the TheGreenOffice going to charge me shipping? A representative told me “that’s just the way the store is setup”…Huh? So they’re fine charging shipping for carbon offsets? Talk about money for nothing!

My conclusion: in order to be really certain that your carbon-offset money is actually going to promote renewable energy, purchase from a green-e certified company and no one else. While it’s certainly possible that these middle companies are legitimate, I simply ran out of energy (no pun intended) trying to prove this to myself. I decided to purchase directly from BEF and I feel good knowing that my purchase was real. With no faux shipping charge or security warnings!

(I should note that I communicated all of this to DreamHost and they seem satisfied with TheGreenOffice’s validity, but they said they’d consider purchasing from a more direct source in the future.)

Next, I wanted to see what kind of official certifications I could get for my business as a whole.

I phoned green-e.org and got a very nice fellow on the phone who explained the very intensive process for becoming certified by them. First off, there was a $750 fee that covered all of the rigorous administrative time it took to actually verify that your company was doing what it said it was. For a bigger company this would be no problem, but for my small business, it was too expensive to pursue.

I was delighted to find the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had a “Green Power Partnership” program that had no fee. I’ve filled out their partnership agreement and faxed it in. I should hear back within a few weeks and I’ll update the status here.

So in summary, here’s my advice to green your home or business:

1. See if your current energy supplier can “green up” your energy. Energy includes electricity, oil, natural gas, etc. Make sure their methodology is green-e certified.

2. For any energy use that can’t be “greened up”, purchase REC/Carbon-offsets from a green-e certified company like the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. Simply use their carbon calculator and buy the offsets. They’re even a non-profit so your purchase may be tax-deductible.

3. See if your utility company will give your home or company an energy audit to see if there are ways you can conserve and use less.

4. Seek out some kind of valid, official, widely recognized certification for your company’s green status.

Happy Greening!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 7:24 pm and is filed under the Tidbits category. Read other Aldebaran Website Design Blog articles by returning to main blog page. Need a blog added to your website? Click here to read about blog installation services or click here to contact Aldebaran Web Design. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.