My wife Gina and I were out shuttling our son Lucas to soccer practice this weekend - tech training actually - and after that we were driving our eldest daughter Laurel to a friends house. None of this is remarkable, right? Most parents of teens or pre-teens are out driving their kids to soccer or other sporting events, music lessons, the mall (ugh, at Christmas time! I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than drive to a mall...different post). What made this particular drive a little different, was the conversation after we dropped Lucas off.Our neighbour's son Patrick plays on the same indoor soccer team as Lucas. Lately we've been making a concerted effort to carpool the kids to their practices and games - one family drives both boys there and back, or splits the trip so one drops off and the other picks up. Given the time of year and that some work in offices (I don't, thank goodness), and how hard it is to make a 5pm practice time that happens to be across the city, well we all try to pitch in and help out.
I'll admit that I'm not a rabid environmentalist (surprise for those of you that know me, right...). But in this post-Paris carbon accord world we live in, I think it's fair to say that an awareness has been raised and lurks in most people's minds, somewhere back there with the other "basic be good" thoughts like don't spit in public, don't litter and other obvious civil thoughts. I think it's fair that we should all try and do our part and be environmentally responsible in our choices. It's certainly easier these days with recycling and garbage bins provided by the city - all we have to do is separate the two. My wife and I used to pay a private recycling service ages ago, before it was de rigeur and provided by the city. It shouldn't be that hard to think of other ways to be "green", right? Carpooling has been around forever, so it's not a stretch.
Personal Carbon Credits - such a hard nut to crack?
After enjoying the rest of the day, a nice walk or two on a chilly Calgary day, a performance of The Nutcracker ballet and a relaxing evening (I've edited my schedule to leave out some annoyances that aren't germane to this thread), the thought came up again - soccer parents pooling resources to reduce carbon emissions and monetize those savings. There, I had the right lexicon now - monetize, the lingo of the app generation. Turning something hitherto unthought of into MONEY. Add in some 21st century green thought here and it becomes, using unconventional approaches to self-fund a personal carbon reduction programme. Great, what is it?The thought boils down to ebay or kijiji for carbon. A place where you can offer up your carbon reduction to others to offset their carbon output. I had to look into the whole carbon offset thing, since it's not front of mind (still back there with no public spitting). Broadly speaking, carbon offsets are things you buy to compensate the planet for carbon output that you produce, or cause to be produced, by some activity you perform. Think airline carbon offsets - you're taking a trip by airplane, which will create some carbon output into the atmosphere. In order to atone for your environmental faux pas, you can purchase an offset - basically paying money to someone, somewhere who will produce an environmentally beneficial outcome that will absorb the corresponding carbon your share of the flight will release.
I'm not an expert in this stuff. In fact I'm not even fluent in this carbon stuff, so I went to the source of all information, Google, and looked up personal carbon offsets. I got a hit on a site that had a paper commissioned by the Clean Air, Cool Planet organization. The paper is from 2006 and is a review of "retail carbon offset providers", which is an early form of what I was thinking about. It's an interesting read on how people can leverage carbon offset programmes for personal or retail use. The authors devised a methodology to rate the providers and came up with a top 8 list internationally. Not many were in Canada, none of the top 8, but that was 9 years ago and things have likely changed. The best part of the paper is really how they frame the whole carbon offset issue, and bring some clarity to how offset programmes should be audited so people aren't overselling offsets, that the quality of the offsets is commensurate with the rate charged, and the whole issue of "additionality". Nerd out on that!!
While I digested that article, I was reminded that Gina and I subscribe to Bullfrog Power. Bullfrog Power is an organization that basically charges you a fee, monthly and they produce green power (electrical, natural gas, etc) to replace what you use monthly. At first I thought they were an offset provider, but they aren't.
Offsetting vs Neutrality
Bullfrog Power doesn't sell offsets, they provide a way for businesses and people at large to "neutralize" their carbon footprint. Think of it this way, offsetting is like penance - you've committed an act that requires you to be pardoned by paying someone to do something good in return. In this case, you've produced the carbon and you're paying someone else to underproduce their carbon relative to what they normally would, so your production of carbon can be offset (I think that's right). Neutralizing your carbon footprint is basically negating what you produce. We pay Bullfrog Power a monthly fee to produce green electricity from wind, solar, or hydro, that produces zero, or close to zero carbon. So we pay about $14 a month to neutralize our carbon footprint for electricity. According to our bill, that's $0.02/kWh on roughly 673kWh of electricity. Our last Enmax bill shows that we actually consumed 556kWh at a rate of $0.056/kWh, so we are, in fact, more than neutral in our carbon footprint, we are positive! A small moment to celebrate, but this only relates to our electricity, not our natural gas use (furnace is gas) or our carbon footprint relative to our vehicles. But it's a start.One of the articles on bullfrogpower.com talks about how in Ontario the bullfrogpower rate is 3 cents per kWh, relative to a normal power rate of 10 cents per kWh, making Bullfrog Power's neutralizing rate a 30% increase in a regular Ontario power users bill. Well, at 2 cents on a 5 cent power rate in Alberta, we're paying a 40% premium. In fact, when you total our actual Energy Charge as per Enmax for November 2015, it's $30.70 and our Bullfrog bill is $14.15, so really, on the pure energy charge basis, we pay a 46.09% premium for our carbon neutrality (positivity?). The point isn't that the price of carbon correctness is high - it's going to be higher in environmental terms if we don't start doing something to fix the problem - it's that there are ways to take action today.
What Will The Future Hold?
Who knows? I don't know. You don't know. But I'm pretty sure we collectively know that moving to reduce our carbon output at a personal level is every bit as important as it is for corporations and governments to put into action carbon reduction programmes. And it looks like the provinces and the federal government are at least moving to do something. Hopefully something that will address the problem without crippling the economy. In the spirit of that ideal, here's a thought. Why not provide Canadian tax payers with a carbon tax credit for reduced CO2 emissions, much like the home renovation tax credit reimbursed home owners for improving their home's efficiency. But instead of making it a small one time credit, make it a recurring credit that varies based on a carbon baseline? Have home owners establish a CO2 profile for their homes or lifestyle, then they can take action by getting solar panels, solar water heaters, improved furnace efficiency, etc. Whatever they do, they can have the baseline re-evaluated (annually?) and depending on the level of reduction, the governments (federal, provincial and/or municipal) could provide tax credits against income tax or property tax. The governments can then claim the reductions at the national level for compliance with Paris accord commitments. If technology could be built (it can) to measure these baselines regularly, the precision would be better and the data could be used to further improve programmes and incentives.Okay, I may have gone into tech-nerd overdrive on that last paragraph, but it had to come out. I only wanted to say that maybe there's a way to provide people with direct tax credits from the governments. Is that what the future holds? It's the past in BC, where that provincial government already provides low income residents with a tax credit for the carbon tax in that province. That's not what I meant in this case. I think low income people need to be considered in any policy decisions about carbon taxation, offsets, etc. But I think we need to get people moving to incent them to be carbon proactive.
One of my favorite topics with Gina is rooftop solar. She has been a long time advocate of solar panels. When we discussed it for our house a few years back, the program that Enmax had was simply unfriendly. The homeowner footed the bill for the install, the payback, at least in our case was 20+ years for the install costs. And to top it off, if the owner sold the house, he/she was responsible to remove the system at their cost if the new owner didn't want it (who wouldn't want it... think maintenance costs). Some incentive.
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| Solar roofing shingles from Solar Shingle Canada (pvtech.ca) |
Well, lo and behold, there are such things. Don't ask me if they're economical, I don't know, but look at the image. A roof - darn nice one too - with partial regular shingles and partial solar shingles. Looking at the website, these folks have managed to build a hybrid roofing system so entire roof faces are solar generating (there is a calculator on the website that calculates the cost of the roof and the Ontario government's ANNUAL payment/credit to the home owner). Where's the future...there's part of it. Get local city planning departments to mandate solar roofs, or that building code state that roofs with solar generating capacity of "X" must use solar roofing materials and that those systems are an integral part of the house. Give those home owners tax credits that are meaningful. Lets see what that would do to our power generation issues, CO2 reduction goals.
Did I lose it again and nerd out? Maybe I did, but I think that the future isn't bleak. It's full of promise and amazing potential for us to tackle this CO2 thing. We just need to personalize it - maybe move to Hawaii, put solar on our roof and buy an electric car. Ya, you know who you are - own it.
Seriously, Soccer Kids Can Save the Planet
I started this blog post with the fun conversation I had this weekend with Gina and Laurel over carbon credits for soccer parents that car pool their kids. I still think some P2P (parent to parent) carbon market app that can monetize a simple CO2 carbon reduction action like carpooling soccer kids will eventually come out. Heck, the people at TeamSnap should consider it as a feature add-on. TeamSnap is probably the best kids team sport organizing app I've ever seen. First time one of our kids coaching/managers put us on it I thought "here we go..." and now when our kids team management doesn't use it I go "oh crap, now I have to manage this all myself...". It's a cool tool and it's geared for sports teams to make it easy to manage a schedule of games, practices, emails for parents/coaches, refreshments... basically a well thought out app.Since carpooling is a natural by product of all parents involved in their kids sporting activities, it would be a feature to add on - carpooling. Parents can sign up, offer their open seats in their cars. TeamSnap would provide mapping services to the parents who are drivers so they know where to pickup kids whose parents sign them onto an open seat. The system would know where the event is so drivers could use this as navigation to the event/location and know when they have to leave to get the kids and make it on time. Put aside the minutiae of liability for the parents who drive other's kids, the potential for TeamSnap liability (Uber isn't liable, they're a coordinating service, not a taxi service...), and you have a viable feature in TeamSnap. Now all they have to do is figure out the carbon savings for drivers and ... what have we got? A retail carbon offset provider?
What if TeamSnap became a retail carbon offset provider (RCOP)? What if they could monetize the carbon reductions on behalf of parents/teams? TeamSnap could charge a small fee from these carbon credits to help fund their service and development costs. The balance would be passed to the team account on TeamSnap and the team could fund their tournament costs, new jerseys, additional technical training, whatever. The potential market is huge - soccer is the worlds most popular sport.
Ok, not all of those countries have car driving, shuttle parents for soccer kids. But some do, and something like this with such a broad appeal could be a great co-marketing opportunity. After all, 196 parties attended the Paris Climate Conference, 150 countries have football/soccer team sports at some level.
Who knows, this app thing might fly or it might not. But with all those kids playing soccer worldwide, I bet that some soccer kid or kids will save the planet. I'm betting it's my kids. Go MSB!!
