Everywhere we go, we’re bombarded by messages – Drive a hybrid! Buy organic food! Get that freaky-looking light bulb! Change the way you live now or we’re all going to die in 50 years! – that try to guilt us into living more environmentally friendly lives. These messages may have one of two effects: One, you start doing what you can for the environment, although you still may feel it’s not enough; or two, you don’t even bother because you don’t know where to begin. Trading in your car for a hybrid or biking 30 treacherous miles to and from work every day, bringing your own reusable to-go containers to restaurants, and living in semi-darkness to save electricity just isn’t going to happen. The guilt bottlenecks until you become so overwhelmed that you do nothing, or you feel like the little bit you do is useless.
No one understands this better than Austinite Charles Wagner, president of MoveNeutral.com – a website that sells renewable energy credits (RECs), a type of carbon offset. I recently met up with Charles to talk about what carbon offsets and renewable energy credits are, how they’ll help save the environment, and how he’s trying to be a part of that. He’s certainly not letting his youth – he’s only 24 years old – stop him from trying to save the world.
So what are carbon offsets? Just what they sound like: ways to neutralize, or offset, carbon dioxide emissions caused by using non-renewable energy sources like coal and oil. The traditional carbon offsets are riding bikes, taking public transportation, etc. In addition to the offsets of environmentally-conscious lifestyle choices, you can now buy offsets from a third party, most commonly in the form of renewable energy credits, or RECs. It works like this: Energy from non-renewable sources like coal and oil is much cheaper to produce than energy from renewable sources, such as solar or wind power. If a company or other entity wants to switch from non-renewable energy sources to renewable ones, they’ll have to pay more money. In order to make up the difference in price, the entity can then sell the difference between the cost of a renewable energy source and the cost of a non-renewable energy source as a renewable energy credit. People like you and me can buy these RECs and enable the entity to switch to renewable energy sources and thus become carbon-neutral. You can buy credits for many different renewable energy sources, like solar, wind, biomass, biodiesel, and more.
The big concept you should understand, says Charles, is that carbon offsetting changes things immediately and in the long run. The more offsets that exist, the more energy will be produced from renewable sources. The more renewable energy we have, the cheaper it will be, until eventually renewable energy is our main source. And that, of course, will drastically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the environment – and our reliance on foreign oil.
An example: Company X wants to become carbon neutral but they only have $10 to put towards their electricity this year and electricity from a renewable resource like wind power costs $20 per year. Company X can then sell credits for that extra $10, which people then buy. Now Company X has the $20 it needs to get its electricity from wind power. Voila! Company X is carbon-neutral. The goal is to get all entities, from huge companies to individuals, to become carbon-neutral. Many companies, including MoveNeutral.com, serve as middlemen between the companies and the consumers and sell these credits.
The rise of other countries into first-world status compounds the importance of carbon neutrality, Charles says. “If people in India and China, which are quickly becoming first-world countries, all lived like we do in the United States, then we won’t be able to fix the carbon dioxide problem. But if we invest in the solution now, as those countries move up, they’ll know how to create the renewable resources we need to sustain as a planet.”
Sound complicated? It kind of is, but that’s where Charles Wagner and MoveNeutral.com come in – they do the dirty work for you.
It all began when Charles decided to become carbon-neutral this year, effectively offsetting all the carbon dioxide that his day-to-day life puts into the air. “It’s the socially responsible thing to do,” he says, “and it was much cheaper and much harder than I expected.” For starters, he couldn’t get a precise calculation of how much carbon dioxide he was producing, so he couldn’t figure out what all he needed to do to offset it. “The calculators I used were fairly precise but not really accurate. They didn’t take into account the smaller things, like getting a cup of coffee, or slightly bigger things, like taking a boat trip.”
So he decided to make it easy to buy carbon offsets for things people do in everyday life. The obvious place to start was with vehicles, so Charles made MoveNeutral.com’s first product a carbon-neutral vehicle certification. The certification means that you have purchased enough renewable energy credits to offset all the carbon dioxide your vehicle produces in a year. In addition to the certification, you also get a nifty sticker to put on your car. “The sticker is something tangible, something you can look at and know you did something good. And you can let other people know that this option exists for them. If you’re the only person doing it, you’re throwing your money away. But if you show people you’re doing it and get five people to do it, then they get five people to do it, then they get five people, we can change the dynamics of our economy in terms of renewable resources very quickly.”
The most impressive part is that Charles did this practically overnight. “After I came up with the idea, I worked on it for a week, put the site together, and outsourced the sticker design. I sent out press releases to about 100 environmental writers, and by Monday I was already getting a tremendous amount of hits.”
His business has been mostly word-of-mouth – his ads only bring in about 10 people a day. Charles attributes his business model to his vice president, Matthew Riley, an electrical engineering graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. “Matt’s the one who really got me moving on it. He suggested my business model. He said, ‘Go to another brokerage, buy from them, and sell at cost or more.’ And that’s what I did.” (MoveNeutral.com currently works with Native Energy.)
MoveNeutral.com is a for-profit entity, but Charles is unapologetic about it – in fact, it’s one of the features of the website that he’s proud of. “I really wanted to show people that you can make money doing something good,” Charles says. “And if someone out there wants to become my competition and puts me out of business, that’s great, because the end result is the same: less carbon dioxide in the air. I welcome the competition.”
The vehicle certification looks costly up front – $55 for a small vehicle, $79 for a medium-sized vehicle, and $115 for a large vehicle. So Charles decided that soon he’ll offer the option of paying for your certification monthly. “When you break it down into monthly payments, it costs about the price of a latte a month,” he says. “Not a bad deal.”
Soon after the website launched, Charles added a few more products to his repertoire. Now you can also make your website carbon-neutral at no cost with a snippet of code he provides. Moveneutral.com now also offers personalized consultations on making your business carbon neutral. They’ve also got a fashion line and a housing product in the works. “The goal is to get really specific,” says Charles. “Like, making your laptop carbon-neutral. It will never be perfect, but if we all get really, really close, then on average, as a whole, we can change the world.”
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