What Does It Mean When A Company Says It Is Carbon-Neutral?

But what, exactly, does becoming carbon neutral mean?

It turns out that there's no agreed-upon definition of carbon neutral, even as rock groups like the Rolling Stones, events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars, and a growing number of companies have set carbon neutrality as a goal.

Among them, and this is by no means a complete list, are such well-known firms as Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), HSBC (HBC), Swiss Re, Timberland (TBL) and Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) (You can read about Google's plans here, HSBC's here, Swiss RE's here, Timberland's here and Yahoo's here.) Some are already carbon neutral, others still on the way.

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Comments

[MGhamma]

It means that they don't care one way or the other. DUH!!

[KillTheMessenger]

As of today it means absolutely nothing. There is no way that a company can completely offset all of its carbon sources and make a buck.

If all I wanted was to offset the carbon of a typical consumer product like a PC, it would go like this: I would have to charge you for the energy used to make all raw materials and used in all production processes. That would be about 10% of the cost of the product. Then I would have to ask you to pay for electricity generation capacity for the projected product life of the product. Let's say that's a PC which could run 24/7 for approx. 5 years. So that's 40W (for a green PC) times 24 hours * 365 days/year * 5 years or approx. 1800kWh. To generate 40W for five years it takes a 200W solar panel for one fifth of its estimated lifetime. At current market prices that's another $150.

I am asking you, are YOU willing to pay 10% + $150 more on a PC worth some $350, i.e. a total of $535?

Hardly.

[lamarguerite]

This is where initiatives like AMEE can play such an important role in bringing out more objective measurement of carbon emissions. See discussion thread on post I recently wrote:

http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/3-inconvenient-truths-about-carbon-calculators/