Cashing in on cutting carbon at home

Mira Oberman Yahoo News 18 Mar 10;

CHICAGO (AFP) – Can the promise of a free cupcake or some cold hard cash work better than dire predictions of dying polar bears and rising sea levels at getting people to cut their carbon footprint?

Two US-based startup companies certainly hope so.

Energy brokers in White Plaines, New York have launched what they hope will be a global exchange platform for selling carbon offset credits based on cutting home energy use.

They sold the first credit in January for 21.50 dollars -- yielding a 4.30 dollar brokerage fee -- and expect to sell the second in the coming weeks.

"It's an experiment," said Marissa Miraval, campaign manager for MyEex, which runs myemissionsexchange.com.

The concept is simple: finger wagging hasn't convinced most people to turn the lights off when they leave the room. But paying them a few bucks for putting a sweater on instead of turning up the heat might just do the trick.

Get enough people on board and it can have a real impact on greenhouse gas emissions. And those 20 percent brokerage fee will start to add up.

So far about 2,000 households have signed up and MyEex is working to get its method of using utility bills to track reductions certified as a legitimate carbon offset.

It's not clear whether the system will actually encourage people to cut their energy use or merely reward them for decisions they had already made.

But Miraval said it's worth a try.

"The carbon credit -- that's like the sprinkles on the icing," said Randy Wilson, who earned MyEex's first carbon credit after outfitting his Pennsylvania home with solar panels.

Wilson and his wife decided to get off the grid last year after their electricity company announced that rates were going to go up 30 to 40 percent.

They threw out their son's waterbed, switched to compact fluorescent light bulbs, and started unplugging things like computers when they weren't being used.

Then they installed a 58,000-dollar solar panel system that slashed their electricity bill from 120 dollars a month to zero.

Tax credits brought the cost down to 22,000 dollars and Wilson is earning about 2,700 dollars a year selling renewable energy certificates to area utility companies.

He figures it will have paid for itself in six years. And it saved enough energy in the first six months to power a television for 25,000 hours.

"The whole concept of saving money and getting paid to do it, that just boggles me," he told AFP.

"And when you think of the potential out there, there's hundreds of millions of homes that could at least earn one carbon credit a year."

About 17 percent of total US greenhouse gas emissions come from people's homes: heating, cooling, electricity and the noxious fumes emitted from decomposing household garbage.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that adds up to four metric tons (almost 9,000 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent per person every year.

Joanna Smith was amazed at how easy it was to cut back on the electricity bills in her tiny New York apartment after joining Earth Aid.

The Washington-based company offers members points that can be cashed in for rewards like free spa treatments and discounts on everything from yoga classes to energy audits and organic baby clothes.

More importantly for Smith, it tracks utility bills and sends e-mails alerting her to how much energy she's using when she forgets to turn off the lights or unplug things.

"Because of the electronic billing that I have I don't even see a bill anymore," Smith said.

"I really had no concept of my consumption prior to Earth Aid."

Earth Aid, which got its start selling energy efficiency products online, spent two years developing a system which can automatically access and analyze electronic bills from most US utilities.

"We've always had a part passion on our team, a measure of quantification -- getting the facts in front of folks and doing it in a way that doesn't burden people," chief executive officer Ben Bixby said.

More than 160 companies across the country have signed up as reward partners and thousands of people are tracking their energy use with the free service.

One of the most popular rewards is a 25-dollar gift certificate at Founding Farmers, an upscale restaurant in Washington which sources its food from organic and sustainable farms.

"We looked at Earth Aid and just thought it was genius," said Dan Simons, who helped develop the restaurant.

Encouraging people to live more sustainable lives is part of the core mission of the restaurant, he said, and the program is a great way to reach out to a "warm target audience".

"If they care about that they definitely care about the type of food we're doing."