A Christmas Club for the Climate

A company or a home owner wants to reduce their carbon footprint by installing renewable energy or making a deep energy retrofit but it does not make financial or logical sense to proceed at this moment. The Carbon Xprint process would allow them to reduce their carbon footprint today and make that deep energy retrofit or install renewable energy at a more opportune time.

There are many reasons that make sense for postponing these type of projects. For example, a homeowner has solar resources and wants to install solar collectors on the roof. They have an asphalt shingle roof and it has been in place for some time but still has several years of life before it would have to be replaced. It may not make sense to install the solar collectors and then in a few years remove them, replace the roof, and then reinstall the collectors. The prudent approach is to wait until the roof needs to be replace before installing the solar collectors.

Many companies are in a similar boat. They want to demonstrate sustainability to the supply chain and consumers but it is just too early to close or replace a plant or a factory line. In addition to concerns about jobs and capital expenditures it may simply be wasteful to throw away the embodied energy in the existing plant and use more energy to create a new one.

In some cases it may be better for the fight on climate change to hold off before making some changes. In a chapter of the 2012 IPCC report by Korytarova and Ürge-Vorsatz they state “the potential risk for shallow retrofits to result in lower levels of energy efficiency and higher medium-term mitigation costs when compared to performance-based policies promoting deep retrofits”. A deep retrofit is where all the building systems are taken into account and a shallow retrofit would be less than all the building systems taken into account. An example of a shallow retrofit would be only the heating system.

This does not mean that we wait until the roof is leaking before we take action for our own carbon footprint. We can all have a stake in the solution to climate change much sooner than that.

Just as there is no Santa Clause that makes gifts appear on Christmas day there is no magic bullet for climate change. A century ago banks began to offer Christmas Clubs. These are term savings accounts. They helped families reach their goal of having enough money for Christmas gifts. They did this by allowing the customer to make small incremental savings all year so by the Holidays they would have enough cash for gifts.

We can do something similar for our carbon footprint by making incremental savings for future renewable energy, energy storage, and energy efficiency projects. The increments or units for these term savings accounts would be equivalent to the cost of a ton of carbon dioxide. The pool of money created by these savings would be dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. It could be put to work immediately financing efficiency and renewable power projects that are ready to go. Since these savings units are equivalent to a ton of CO2,

it is a measurable demonstration that the company or home owner is taking action for their carbon footprint today. This would help companies appease shareholders, sustainable supply chain requirements, and consumers. The carbon footprint could be covered at the same rate that it is created. When the time comes to finance that efficiency or renewable power project, money would be available.

Unlike Christmas gifts, these projects give back, have a return on investment, and will reduce the long term operating cost of the company or the home.

There is no reason to wait for the day that our roof begins to leak or our factories become obsolete. This variation of the flexible Carbon Xprint process allows us to quantifiably take action for our carbon footprint now. Putting our incremental savings to work creates efficiency and renewable power for others today. When that day comes for our own project, we will be steps ahead.