The Last Shall Be First

I suspect Pamela Fink, our indefatigable director of PR at MXenergy, must have thought she was dreaming when she saw the headline come across her desk Tuesday.

Direct Energy, one of our worthy competitors in British Columbia, had just put out a press release announcing they were the first to introduce a carbon offset product in the gas market. Within minutes Pamela was on the phone to me:

“Jeff,” she begins, “you know we’ve been marketing this product for six months in the States and that I’ve been talking to reporters in Vancouver about it for several weeks….” Her voice sounded a bit stressed. Was it from lack of sleep editing my blog entries? Concern that we were opening up in three new states soon? Or panic that I was about to erupt like Krakatoa, which I suppose would be appropriate since it is said that when that volcano erupted in 1885 it blotted out the sun for weeks and made today’s global warming look like a sunny day at the beach.

I think she was worried about Krakatoa.

“Pamela,” I said, “I know we were the first to introduce carbon offset to the BC market. And to the US market for that matter. No worries. In my view, if our competitors will follow our lead I don’t care if they all claim to be first second and third… We’ll have made a difference!”

Krakatoa has gone dormant. The fact is that over 30% of US carbon dioxide emissions come from utilities and another 25% or so from industrial boilers for factory production and home furnaces burning natural gas for heating. In other words, if all the utilities and natural gas distributors in the country followed our lead we could reduce the US carbon dioxide emissions by 55% -- a significant percentage of world contributions to global warming.

We had worked for months to research this market and make sure we were offering legitimate reforestation projects to absorb our customers’ carbon dioxide emissions. When we started talking to one of the pioneers in carbon offsets projects -- Sustainable Forestry Management in London – most people thought carbon offset would never be accepted. Among other things, they were nervous that a new product like this would not be understood. Nearly everybody studied about photosynthesis in junior high school. But applying that knowledge as an adult was something else entirely. Sure, the biology textbooks showed that trees and plants convert carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen, store the carbon in the plant and emit the oxygen. But how do reforestation projects accomplish this? And how can we trust that these projects really will work?

For years people have talked about conservation. But as long as energy consumption keeps increasing, conservation efforts will have a negligible impact on carbon dioxide emissions. By contrast, carbon sink projects – i.e., projects that help to absorb carbon dioxide by supporting new forestation programs and other methods for absorbing CO2 – can have a significant impact. Remember, the average homeowner accounts for over 5 tons of CO2 emissions every year!

Now that companies like Delta Airlines have jumped on board, carbon offset projects are a well-respected tool for dealing with the dangerous impact of CO2 emissions. And it’s only a matter of time before large utilities as well as competitive marketers like MXenergy and Direct Energy, also join the effort. SFM and MXenergy have launched a reforestation project in Montana on the Kootenai Indian reservation, planting hardwood trees. Pictures can be found in one of my first blog entries.

“Pamela,” I added, “MXenergy may have been first to the market with a carbon offset product, but if our competitors want to share the credit, let them! Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery!”