Climate Action Offsetter: Rocking a Smaller Carbon Footprint at Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza

written by Green Mountain Energy

Music festivals may not be the first place you think about reducing your carbon footprint, but C3 Presents and Green Mountain Energy Company are working together to change that. The Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits music festivals, both produced by C3 Presents, bring together hordes of music lovers with substantial carbon footprints from traveling to the three-day festivals. Green Mountain helps balance out that environmental impact by offering the Green Mountain Energy® Fan Tag, a quick and easy way for attendees to ‘green up’ their festival travel by purchasing Climate Action Reserve certified carbon offsets.

This year, Green Mountain Energy Fan Tag sales supported landfill methane capture projects located in the same region as each festival. Austin City Limits Fan Tag sales went toward the SouthTex Greenwood Farms project in Taylor, Texas, while Lollapalooza Fan Tag sales supported the Central Sanitary project in Pierson, Michigan. Both projects are certified by the Climate Action Reserve, helping assure fans that their Fan Tag purchase is backed up by high quality emissions reductions. More than 2,300 Fan Tags were sold in 2011, helping offset over 500,000 pounds of CO2 emissions. Over the five year partnership between C3 Presents and Green Mountain, nearly 17,000 Fan Tags have been sold, resulting in over 16.7 million pounds of CO2 emissions balanced out by fans!

The Green Mountain Energy Fan Tag program has been an integral part of greening up the festival experience for attendees, but C3 Presents has gone even further by committing to offset 100% of the carbon footprint of each festival, along with its own Austin, TX, office operations. For the first time ever, this impressive commitment was expanded in 2011 to include offsetting artist travel to and from the festivals. Green Mountain provided carbon footprint calculation services, procured high quality renewable energy certificates and CAR certified carbon offsets, offered marketing guidelines for C3’s environmental purchases and helped promote and sell the Fan Tags.

Together, C3 Presents and Green Mountain have helped spread awareness among fans about their carbon footprint, while making the festivals a little bit greener.

—————————-

Would you like to be featured in the Reserve newsletter and earn a free reusable Reserve water bottle? Each monthly newsletter, the Reserve will showcase an individual or organization who has retired CRTs to offset their emissions. To submit an entry, please share a few paragraphs (up to 350 words) about you and your decision to offset. Photos are welcome! Featured submissions in the newsletter will earn water bottles, and all submitted entries will be posted on the Reserve web blog. Email your entries to: rhey@climateactionreserve.org.

This is an excellent opportunity to highlight your environmental stewardship and advancement of climate solutions. This is also an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of outstanding GHG reduction projects.

Mexico INE President Dr. Francisco Barnes joins Climate Action Reserve Board of Directors

Election of Dr. Barnes re-emphasizes organizational focus on activities in Mexico

SACRAMENTO, CA – The Climate Action Reserve, North America’s largest and fastest growing carbon offset registry, announced that Dr. Francisco Barnes Regueiro, President of the National Institute of Ecology (INE) for the Government of Mexico, has been elected to its Board of Directors. Dr. Barnes is successor to Dr. Adrián Fernández Bremauntz as INE President and assumes the seat previously held by Dr. Fernández on the Reserve Board. Dr. Barnes’ active involvement with the Reserve will help guide the organization’s ongoing activities in Mexico, including continued protocol development.

“Dr. Barnes’ participation on the Reserve Board of Directors is a true asset to the growth and development of the organization, and I am extremely honored to welcome him. We continue focusing on helping create market opportunities in Mexico. Dr. Barnes can provide insightful advice and a unique perspective to our ongoing activities in the country, as well as offering input on other cross-border initiatives,” said Linda Adams, Chair of the Climate Action Reserve Board of Directors and former Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency.

Prior to his appointment as President of INE, Dr. Barnes was a partner at McKinsey & Company, where he specialized in developing strategies for low-carbon growth, adaptation to climate change, energy and other sustainable development issues, such as water pollution and solid waste. He served as part of the company’s global leadership in sustainability and energy practices and advised governments, NGOs and private and public sector companies throughout Latin America in the areas of energy, climate change, water, oil and other key issues. Dr. Barnes also served as a visiting professor at Boston University, has received numerous awards for his academic work and is a published author.

“The work the Climate Action Reserve has already done in Mexico is remarkable, and I am looking forward to becoming involved with such an innovative, open, and action-oriented organization. Its protocols provide means and incentive for reducing GHG emissions in a way that uses the power of the market to achieve our environmental goals. I am also excited to be involved in pioneering new ways that we can use the Reserve’s work to achieve greater environmental benefit through work between our two countries, both at a federal and particularly at a subnational level, including the upcoming California cap-and-trade program,” said Dr. Barnes.

Please visit the Climate Action Reserve website to learn more about the organization and its Board of Directors.

Mexico Landfill Project Protocol Version 1.1 is now available

Climate Action Offsetter: The Pan Pacific Hotel Seattle

written by the Pan Pacific Hotel Seattle

Pan Pacific Hotel Seattle is a luxury hotel located in the innovative South Lake Union neighborhood in Seattle, home to cutting edge technology companies and innovative life sciences organizations. In 2010, the hotel made a conscious decision to institute a comprehensive sustainability program called PanEarth, which honors the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.

The program began as a conscious effort to place sustainable and environmentally friendly practices as a top priority. Through the PanEarth program, Pan Pacific Hotel Seattle offers guests two options to offset their hotel stay and travel time. The sustainable travel option allows guests to mitigate the impact of their air and car travel by purchasing Climate Reserve Tonnes from a landfill project through our partner, Seattle-based OneEnergy Renewables. Transparency and legitimacy are important values of the PanEarth program. Having our offsets issued by a highly esteemed organization such as the Reserve supports these values. In addition, our program provides our guests the opportunity to follow the life cycle of their contribution, from verification through implementation.

The second option is the environmentally neutral hotel stay, which encourages conscientious environmental practices during a guest’s hotel visit. When guests financially match the electricity use of an average stay in one of our rooms, their contribution supports about 40 kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean, wind energy going onto the US electricity grid. The wind energy for our hotel stay program is supported in the form of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), which are sourced from facilities in both Washington State and North Dakota.

We chose to incorporate offsets into our PanEarth program because we are committed to being a hospitality leader in the area of Global Social Responsibility and believe that sustainable practices enhance guests’ and associates’ health as well as their experience with the property. In short, we believe makes business sense. It’s a win win for all of us.

P.S. Would you like to be featured in the Reserve newsletter and earn a free reusable Reserve water bottle? Each monthly newsletter, the Reserve will showcase an individual or organization who has retired CRTs to offset their emissions. To submit an entry, please share a few paragraphs (up to 350 words) about you and your decision to offset. Photos are welcome! Featured submissions in the newsletter will earn water bottles, and all submitted entries will be posted on the Reserve web blog. Email your entries to: rhey@climateactionreserve.org.

Public comment period open for draft Nitric Acid Production Project Protocol Version 2.0 – public webinar on August 31

Summer Reading Recommendations from the Reserve Staff

Hopefully your summer days are filled with lazing around in the warm afternoon sun with a good book. As you enjoy the sun’s heat on your beach towel or hammock or even airplane seat, you may find yourself pondering about the growing accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Climate Action Reserve staff would like to recommend the following books with a connection to climate change solutions. We are as intent on fighting climate change as Harry Potter is about defeating Voldemort! Reparo climate!

	Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond A must read for any environmentalist, Diamond’s 2005 book Collapse artfully tells the story of how natural resource management decisions of societies (both past and present) influenced those societies’ ultimate successes and failures. Diamond’s attempt to apply lessons learned by these societies to problems facing our society today, like deforestation and climate change, helped propel me into a career in the environmental sector.	Teresa Lang, Policy Associate
	The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey I love the book for its vivid depictions of the hard beauty and expanse of the West and for the strong passion that its characters bring to protecting that beauty. Even while I disagree with the tactics employed by the protagonists, I cannot help but admire their motivation and the lengths that they are willing to go for a cause they believe in. I also appreciate how utterly American the characters are in their fierce independence and iconoclasm. And, it is a good story well told.	Gary Gero, President
	Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet by Edward Hume I may not entirely agree with all of the conclusions drawn in this book, but I found it to be a pretty interesting backstory on a number of major environmental players in the U.S. today. The sections on forest conservation in Maine and the Center for Biological Diversity were especially thought-provoking.	Max DuBuisson, Policy Manager
	In Search of Nature by Edward O. Wilson This book is a collection of essays ranging from the beauty and diversity of species to mankind’s apparent assault on the planet (with a mention of rising CO2 levels and the ultimate consequences). It is at the same time heart-wrenching and uplifting, while brilliantly written. Wilson’s contrasts of nature and human nature are eye-opening and provocative and he reminds the reader just how much we have to fight for.	Gillian Calof, Operations Director
	Acme Climate Action by Provokateur The best interactive activity book for adults: teach your family and friends about climate change and what they can do to reduce their carbon footprint. Includes appliance stickers, postcards, envelope address stickers, carbon footprint counter, environmental performance report cards, posters, climate change trivia cards, and a detachable booklet about climate change and simple solutions. All in one stylish, retro package. All pages can be removed, passed along, used and reused. Share the knowledge and have fun! http://www.acmeclimateaction.com/	Heather Raven, Policy Coordinator
	The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind by Terry Glavin, 2007 Glavin does a great job at capturing and laying out the value of biodiversity and our planet’s ecological history in descriptions of his travels and examples of uncommon species. The bad news is that it’s all in the context of one of the largest extinction events in Earth’s history, the one happening right now. This mass extinction of animals, plants, languages, and culture, Glavin argues, is unique in that the root causes are anthropogenic activities. The reasoning is not always air-tight, but his research is sound and the statistics he cites are very convincing, if not shocking. To give you an idea, we (as a planet) lose “a distinct species every minute, a unique vegetable variety every six hours, [and] an entire language every two weeks.” If you have any interest in biodiversity and conservation, or even if you just like learning about cool stuff like the monster fish in the Amur River or that apples are members of the rose family, I recommend checking out this book. The writing style is very anecdotal as well, which makes for a quick read.	Mark Havel, Program Assistant
	Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne David Byrne takes you on a journey of cities around the world from the point of view of a musician/artist/bicyclist traveling on a folding bicycle. He provides insights into urban planning as he’s experienced the streets and shares how cities could be smartly designed to accommodate and encourage the bi-pedal mode of transportation. Complete with colorful and unique stories of interactions with local culture, this book is an excellent celebration of bicycling. If we all chose to travel by bicycle, no matter the difficulties and potholes and traffic circles and sweaty pits, we would have a healthier climate and healthier communities.	Rhey Lee, Communications Associate
	Uno’s Garden by Graeme Base I honestly don’t read too many grown up books on environmental issues these days as I am mostly reading parenting books when I have the time or energy. But I do enjoy reading children’s books with my kids that celebrate the environment. A current favorite is Uno’s Garden. The book is about the multi-generational effects of not caring for the environment and the importance of being good stewards of the earth. The story reinforces appreciation of forests, plants and animals, while teaching kids about our impact on nature and opportunities to live more sustainably. The book also features games with number concepts.	Katie Bickel Goldman, Senior Policy Manager

Reserve submits comments on California’s revised cap-and-trade regulation to ARB

Future Protocol Development webpage improved to include project concept submission process, protocol development criteria, list of concept submissions to date, and completed issue papers

Beta Version 3.0 of the Livestock Calculation Tool is now available. It is recommended for use in all livestock project calculations and emissions reduction reports

Errata and Clarifications released for U.S. Landfill V3.0, V2.1, V2.0; U.S. Livestock V3.0, V2.2, V2.1; and Organic Waste Composting V1.0