How to Be a Climate Activist with Carbon Offsets

Last week, an email introduced me to a new company called Arcadia. Here’s what the email said:

My Arcadia Statement

Hi George,

I just wanted to let you know about a new money saving feature for California residents.We've teamed up with Arcadia to help you lower your electric bill while using clean energy. 

Arcadia is a new kind of energy provider that works hard to get you the lowest possible rate, while also making the most of clean energy - it's a win-win! Sign-up is easy & savings are seamless — meaning you won’t have to switch your PG&E billing to receive the lower rate.

Simple, easy money.

Although it took a little bit of digging to find out that Arcadia's service actually costs me $5 per statement, I'm happy I spent the 10 minutes needed to learn about their platform and sign up. The complete onboarding process was fast, informative, and well-designed and I plan to continue using their service (until we install our solar system).

Why use a service to spend more on utilities? How can they possibly convert me to clean energy through a web app?

You see, Arcadia is in the business of buying carbon offsets — a growing market in the climate drawdown segment that sells carbon offset certificates from a project that is actively reducing carbon emissions.

At first, I had a negative opinion about carbon offsets. It felt like a tactic to evade responsibilities through policy loopholes, ultimately charging wealthy people and businesses a fine to continue polluting the environment with carbon emissions. But as I read more about carbon offsets and Arcadia's goals, I realized carbon offsets are identical to a cause I've championed for a long time — conscious consumerism. This is the same as the #votewithyourwallet movement I've discussed in a previous post (Why Your Commitment to Sustainability Can Be Profitable).

When you purchase RECs, you are supporting renewable energy. For existing renewable energy generators, RECs are a critical source of income and a financial advantage. For developers, they are a financial incentive to build new renewable energy farms.

Signaling as Activism

When you make the active decision to buy Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) through services like Arcadia or directly from a marketplace like Wren, Nori, or Climeworks you're signaling to the utility companies and energy markets that renewables are important to you.

My Arcadia Dashboard — Referrals

The signal is amplified when you share your financial interest in RECs. Platforms like Arcadia take full advantage of the viral referral loops that are typical in software applications and make referrals simple (here's my link), by incentivizing the sender and the recipient.

By effect, RECs become an incredibly effective way to passively make small contributions to climate change that can have a compounding effect. Purchasing RECs through a modern utility payment platform like Arcadia will help ease your climate-concerned conscience just like purchasing products from companies that make commitments to go net-zero.

Bigger carbon footprints, bigger carbon offsets

This is not to say that carbon offsets are the endgame for the climate crisis — far from it. I like to think of carbon offsets as a form of climate activism, where your donation dollars are signaling where change should happen.

Carbon offsets mean nothing if there aren't enough projects that aim to reduce GHG emissions or if the volume of carbon reduction is not significant enough.

Bill Gates and his climate organization Breakthrough Energy drives the point home rather pragmatically.

Every year, the world adds 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. We need to get to zero.

His work at Breakthrough Energy aims to simplify the data behind climate change and provide realistic steps to take action segmented by key industries and sectors of the economy that are doing the most harm to the climate:

I have a higher-than-average carbon footprint, so I’m taking extra steps to do my part. In the book I briefly mention how I’m offsetting my own emissions. I spend about $5 million every year to offset my family’s carbon footprint. As of now, the standard calculation for carbon footprints is based on an estimate of $400 per ton of emissions. But since the way we calculate carbon footprints is still in its infancy, I take our family’s carbon footprint and double it to make sure we are fully covering our footprint and then some.

In a separate post (Why Emissions Calculators Are the First Step to Impactful Changes), I touch on the impact of carbon footprint calculators to help citizens visualize the impact of their actions — purchases, behaviors, and habits. They drive the message home about the contributions each of us make to emissions. If calculating carbon emissions is a retweet, purchasing carbon offsets is the $5 donation you make to a cause that matters to you.

I'm so excited that companies like Arcadia are making the business case of offsets more reasonable to consumers. By creating value — like a researched directory of RECs and a well-designed app — they can help redirect the stigma from donations and earn the dollars we're paying towards carbon offsets.

Why I'm going to pay Arcadia $5

There’s no question for me:

My Arcadia Dashboard — Energy Usage, Clean kWH, and Clean Impact

• I'm an active consumer of energy

• I'm looking for ways to reduce my carbon footprint or curb carbon emissions

• Arcadia provides an easy way to do it with familiar tools

• Arcadia allows me to purchase with a credit card, when PG&E only allows ACH deposits

• Arcadia does the research to source and purchase RECs

• My $5 purchase signals that I want to see all of my energy come from green energy

• If I share it with friends, I can benefit financially and conscientiously

• I can be a consumer activist

If you're going to talk to the talk, you better walk the walk

If I can expect net-zero commitments from the businesses I shop with, I should expect the same from myself. Committing to sustainable practices may now be a profitable venture for businesses that target climate-conscious shopper segments, but if we don't embody those values, they won't either.

Companies like Method, Honest, Everlane, Girlfriend Collective, Thrive Market, and a growing number of mainstream D2C brands are making the commitment to our planet. Can we make the same commitments?

There's always more that you can do, more that you can read, more that you can learn, but the most important thing is to start now. If it's as simple as signing up for a modern utility service, why not?