ACEEE'S GRAPEVINE ONLINE

January 8, 2007

"CARBONATORS" MOVE TO ERASE ACEEE'S CARBON FOOTPRINT

In the last two years the links between global warming and energy use have grown more alarming. The wreckage Katrina wrought both to New Orleans and to energy markets, the dramatic effect of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and the failure of high gasoline prices to seriously dent oil imports, tell us that the time to study the climate problem is over, and the time to take more serious action is now.

ACEEE's main mission is to conduct research and make policy recommendations on energy efficiency, but we also recognize that while efficiency is the "first fuel" in the race for a sustainable climate, we still have to reckon with the carbon emissions from the energy that we do use. So we have decided to "walk the walk" on our own carbon impacts: starting in 2007, ACEEE will offset all carbon emissions related to our office use, staff travel, and conferences.

During 2006, ACEEE's "Carbonators" team took a hard look at our "carbon footprint" for office operations, staff travel, and conferences. We put our daily office lives under the microscope—no power strip or desk lamp was too small to be accounted for. Flights and commutes were scrutinized, hotel energy bills researched, and emissions tallied. The bottom line is: in an average year, ACEEE accounts for roughly 152 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Carbon "offsets" (defined for our purposes as measures that reduce carbon emissions elsewhere to offset energy use that can't be avoided through improving efficiency) are available on the market, from many organizations and from various sources. ACEEE has applied a set of "RSVP" criteria (Real, Surplus, Verifiable, and Permanent) to separate the wheat from the chaff in picking carbon offsets we can trust. We have narrowed the field to organizations that provide offsets based on 3rd-party verified renewable energy generation projects or energy efficiency programs. The offsets we purchase will be "additional," meaning that they go beyond legal requirements and standard business practices, and use the sale of offsets to be financially viable. We also plan to target our offset purchases regionally to provide other environmental and economic benefits in the regions affected by our office operations and conferences.

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