by Angela Miller
I was having a conversation with a colleague this weekend (ok an argument) about carbon offsetting. Everyone seems to be getting into this game, from the Emmy Awards this weekend to big IT vendors like Sun and Salesforce.com. My colleague thinks this trend is simply wasted effort and money and will have little or no impact of either a company’s bottom line or on the environment. He might be right.

The businessGreen blog featured this very question today with a nice analysis both of what IT manufacturing firms are doing and what both environmentalists and anti-carbon offset advocates see as the disadvantage: choosing to procure carbon offsets without making other fundamental changes within your IT organization does not necessarily improve the environment or the company’s bottom line.

My hot button is the tree-planting offset. Because the ecology.IT blog focuses more on building your green IT department rather than validating the science of carbon offsetting strategies, I will not spend significant time of this issue. I will say, however, that as an environmental scientist I am dubious about tree-planting as a primary method for carbon offsetting both because the projects rarely can guarantee the long-term management of the trees and because the scientific analysis is mixed on the net benefits to the carbon load in the atmosphere of tree planting. For this reason, I generally recommend to potential clients that they consider other carbon offset methodologies. However, as one type of environmental stewardship investment in a larger portfolio of activities (e.g. Dell uses tree-planting as an offset to paper usage within the company), I believe tree planting has a net positive benefit.

So, if we instead focus the conversation around net-new clean energy generation projects funded through carbon offsets we can now have a different conversation as IT managers.

Carbon offsetting should be a supplemental activity that IT Managers include as part of a more significant strategy and portfolio. It is the choice after energy-efficiency improvements and potentially alternative energy sourcing. Once your IT department implements changes that provide substantive improvements, carbon offsets can be a good additional step to neutralize impacts that simply cannot be managed away. The bottom line is that IT must use energy – and for most corporations IT energy demands will continue to grow substantially over the next several years just as they have done for the last decade. However, I caution IT Managers against using Carbon Offsets as a primary strategy for greening your department: you will find a growing number of customers and press dubious about your commitment and corporate social responsibility initiatives if carbon offset is the only step the company has taken.

The value of carbon offsetting with net-new energy generation is that over time those investments increase the potential for reliance on cleaner energy in the future. While such an investment may not be appropriate from the IT budget (I generally recommend that it come from a marketing budget), the responsibility for designing the overall portfolio and estimating the carbon load should come from the IT department.

Dig deeper on the issues:

I relied on the following sites for analysis in support of this post:

businessGreen blog

by Angela Miller
Carbon offsets are another solid option for companies that wish to green their IT department. It is possible to estimate the carbon load or footprint generated by the IT department on an annual basis and then invest in carbon offsets through a company or non-profit that sells certified emission reduction certificates. Again these certificates fund investment in net new renewable energy sources that would generate the same amount of electricity required to power the IT department on an annual basis only with zero carbon emissions.

Carbon trading became extremely active over the last two years and carbon offsets are easily available through a variety of reputable sources. An article on AdvancedTrading.com focused on the increased and robust trading in ‘carbon futures’ and how the trend is dramatically increasing.

It is important for companies to realize that purchasing carbon offsets does not provide a tangible and sustainable benefit to their company beyond the ability to market to their employees and customers that they are now ‘carbon neutral.’ But in a climate where customers are growing more concerned about how green their service providers and suppliers are, being carbon neutral could be a differentiator.

I am assuming that simply posting that companies should consider carbon offsets as a valuable tool in their green computing strategy will engender comments both from people who feel that they are nothing more than ‘buying your conscience so you can pollute more instead of addressing the problem’ and those who believe they are a smokescreen and a waste of money that could be invested in other IT improvements instead. I disagree with both of these stances and instead believe that any steps toward investing in new, cleaner technologies will have tangible long-term benefit for all. It is important that companies purchase carbon offsets from entities that are both reputable and that commit to real investment instead of simple futures trading. A few examples include (not a personal endorsement, but a list of entities I’ve researched):

TerraPass
The Gold Standard
ClimateTrust

For a report about the efficacy of carbon offset entities, check out the report information at Clean Air-Cool Planet.

Dig deeper on the issues:

I relied on the following sites for analysis in support of this post:
www.tekrati.com
Advanced Trading
Clean Air-Cool Planet
United States Environmental Protection Agency