March 4, 2007

Looking For Carbon Offsets 2

Might Al Gore's spokesman have been telling the truth, or something close to it, when she claimed Gore buys "carbon offsets" through his own investment management firm to compensate for his Nashville mansion's incredibly high use of natural gas and electricity generated from "dirty" sources such as coal?

Since the story of Gore the Oscar-winning Energy Hog first broke, I have been writing about the claim by Gore spokesperson Kalee Krider, first reported by The Tennessean, that Gore bought "carbon offsets" through Generation Investment Management, a firm Gore co-founded a few years ago. GIM is an investment management firm for high-net-worth individuals. Despite the firm's claim that it focuses on investing in eco-friendly businesses, its portfolio is strictly garden-variety companies with no particular emphasis on "green" technology or environmental sustainability.

And GIM is not one of the many "carbon offsets" sellers that have cropped up in recent years, offering to absolve carbon-energy consumers of their enviro-guilt by selling them the modern-day equivalent of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church's indulgences - and then taking those "carbon offset" payments and investing them in planting trees or putting up windmills or some such measure to compensate for the buyer's carbon pollution.

It didn't appear at all as if the Gore camp was telling the truth.

But there is a mention of carbon offsets, though not by name, on Generation Investment Management's website: GIM claims to be a carbon-neutral firm.

While we are still a small firm with only 23 employees, Generation is committed to reducing the energy use of operations, both direct and indirect. We do this by minimizing non-essential air travel and by managing our building operations (lighting, recycling, and procurement). We have also had conversations with suppliers about energy efficiency. For the remainder of our carbon footprint, we work with two offset providers (The Chicago Climate Exchange and the Carbon Neutral Company) to ensure our London and Washington D.C. offices are fully carbon neutral. In addition, Generation has sponsored a full energy efficiency audit for each employee's residence, including suggestions for ways they can make home energy improvements.

As an Associate member of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Generation has made a legally binding commitment to purchase Carbon Financial Instruments (CFIs) sufficient to 100% offset the greenhouse gas emissions caused annually by our firm's electricity use and business travel for the period 2005-2010. The Carbon Neutral Company is a voluntary offset provider with whom Generation works to offset emissions, particularly for the partners and families of Generation's 23 employees.

I had seen that web page on GIM's site, but what I didn't know until an alert reader posted a comment to a previous Gore-related post is what that web page said a year ago. The reader ran a search of the Google cache and found that as recently on May 27, 2006, the web page said this

Generation is committed to offsetting the carbon emissions of its staff and operations, and has selected to work with Future Forests to become Carbon Neutral. To offset emissions, Future Forests in partnership with the Solar Electric Lighting Company (SELCO), will replace environmentally damaging kerosene lamps in rural areas of India and Sri Lanka with cheaper, more efficient solar powered lighting systems which produce zero CO2.

Marketing firms are cashing in on public concern about the environment to sell PR services rather than solutions. They claim to be able to create "offset" projects such as woodlands to absorb "all the harmful carbon dioxide" emitted by individuals, firms, or meetings. One example of this worrying trend is the UK-based Future Forests, which sells a so-called patented "carbon-neutral" label to clients. Unlike companies such as EcoSecurities, Future Forests concentrates less on helping its customers cope with new climate-related legislation than on helping them advertise themselves to the public as climatically responsible.

Future Forests/Carbon Neutral has recently been accused of being little more than a "smokescreen" for polluters. As Indymedia UK (not exactly a rightwing mouthpiece) reported recently, Carbon Neutral, formerly known as Future Forests, was the carbon-offsets that was "involved in the Coldplay forest fiasco." What was the Coldplay forest fiasco, you ask? Well, if you are a Coldplay fan, you are familiar with their CD A Rush of Blood to the Head. The CD "was triumphantly trumpeted as a carbon neutral recording, with the carbon emitted in its production being 'offset' by planting 10,000 mango trees at Karnataka in India," says Indymedia UK.

The job of these trees was to absorb carbon; however, what they did was release more carbon when they largely died in the largely dry Indian state, with only a few hundred now remaining. Of course each link in the management chain blamed the next link, until the small farmers who planted them ultimately got it in the neck. ... One of the project participants, Anandi Sharon Mieli of Women for Sustainable Development, is quoted by that clarion of the left, the Sunday Telegraph, as saying 'Carbon Neutral had a condescending attitude, they do it for their interests, not really for reducing emissions. They do it because it's good money'.

Does GIM buy carbon offsets through Future Forests/Carbon Neutral today? Unknown. Does Gore buy carbon offsets through Carbon Neutral? Unknown. But even if he does, that still leaves many unanswered questions.

For one, that is not what Gore's spokesman claimed. In the original Tennessean story, Gore spokesperson Kalee Krider said, "They, of course, also do the carbon emissions offset."

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe, she said.

Perhaps what is really happening is a bit of a shell game. Gore claims to buy carbon offsets through GIM, and GIM indeed does buy some "offsets" through Carbon Neutral or some other carbon-offsets marketer, and some are assigned to Gore while Gore's money is - Krider's word - "invested" to generate a return. All well and good except that GIM's portfolion makes it clear the money isn't invested in "green" energy companies at all.

If Gore is "offsetting" his Nashville mansion's large use of power from the Tennessee Valley Authority's coal plants, which produce 60 percent of the electricity used in Gore's house, with "carbon offsets" from Carbon Neutral, there's little reason to be confident his "offsets" are actually doing much to help the environment. Because increasingly that doesn't appear to be what carbon offsets actually do. Instead, they are sold to wealthy elites to allow them to appear "green" and pad their environmental resume, and they are sold to make money off of gullible folks who want to do something they believe will help the environment.

And there's still the issue of Generation Investment Management itself, a firm touted as an investment management firm for high-net-worth individuals seeking to invest in a portfolio of eco-friendly companies. GIM's portfolio is a garden-variety mix of companies with no special claim on being environmentally friendly, yet having Gore, the guru of global warming, as its chairman gives it the patina of a firm aligned with environmental concerns. Like "carbon offsets," though, it may just be a cynical, profit-minded marketing ploy to draw in cash from the gullible.