The healthy carbon diet

Companies preoccupied with their bulky carbon footprints should opt for healthy conservation over “lite” carbon offsets

People are becoming increasingly familiar with the term “carbon footprint” — that is, the amount of carbon dioxide an organization or individual is responsible for exuding. The phrase has garnered increasing popularity as the world has become more eco-conscious and carbon dioxide has essentially been deemed Eco Enemy No. 1, thanks to the links scientists have made between the gas and global warming.

Also becoming increasingly en vogue: being “carbon neutral,” which ought not be confused with being “carbon free.” The latter, to me, means you’re somehow managing to produce zero carbon dioxide through your business processes. That’s an easy concept to grasp but difficult to achieve, given that the fossils fuels on which we depend to power electric companies and modes of transit also generate CO2.

Compare that to carbon neutrality, which means an organization measures its carbon footprint, then invests in projects, or “carbon offsets,” intended to negate or make up for the damage that carbon is thought to cause to the environment.

One of the more popular ones — and I feel a little guilty about writing about it so often — is Dell’s “Plant a Tree for Me” program. Dell teamed up with The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org to set up this program through which people can donate money to plant trees to offset the carbon produced by, say, a new server or PC.

So, by Dell’s calculations, $2 worth of trees will offset the carbon produced by a notebook. Forty bucks will negate a server’s CO2 damage.

Neat and tidy, sure, and hey, it’s a good cause. But is it the best use of resources for a company that wants to be better steward of the environment? And more important, does a participating company really reap any substantial benefits from it, save for being able to tell people, “Hey, we planted $1,000 worth of trees to make up for our new remote office in Tuscaloosa”?

Another carbon offset strategy: Put money toward nonpolluting alternative-energy projects. Rackspace is among companies employing that strategy for its U.S. datacenters as part of its ambition to become carbon neutral. It uses the fossil-fuel-dependent electricity itself but buys offsets through NativeEnergy for a wind farm project in South Dakota and a methane project in Pennsylvania.

Again, good causes, certainly, but again: Is that really the best strategy a company can adopt to reduce its environmental impact?

I am not at all intending to knock Rackspace or Dell; these offsets are just part of their respective carbon-reduction plan. What I’m driving at here is the bigger picture, for companies that want to be deemed carbon neutral but just want to take a quick and easy “throw money at it” approach.

The fact of the matter is, there are better ways for organizations to reduce their carbon footprint that not only benefit the environment, but have a long-term benefit for the company. Rather than fixating on the somewhat gimmicky goal of being carbon neutral, companies would be better served focusing on boosting efficiency and energy conservation.

Virtualization, for example: Rather than not making any changes in your datacenter and then paying money to some other organization to offset your server usage, how about using virtualization technology so that you can get rid of some of the hardware you have, or postpone buying more anytime soon? You save on your energy and cooling bills (which means less carbon), you get more bang out of the floor space in your facility, and hey, it’s like a future carbon offset for the servers you don’t need to buy tomorrow, if you want to think of it in those terms.

Or how about putting your carbon-offset fund toward a project such as what HP just introduced: a power-capping tool that you can use to control how much energy each server in your datacenter consumes? Again, less energy used and less carbon emitted. You have the carbon-offset benefit, but you’ve made an investment in your company that pays off in the long run. Plus, it better prepares you for any future legislation aimed at putting caps on the greenhouse gasses you’re allowed to produce.

I can keep listing projects that will have these benefits: Solar panels, such as Google and Microsoft have installed. Telecommuting programs such as Sun and Xerox have. PC-power management tools. More energy-efficient desktops, or thin clients in place of the PCs. You can also look beyond your IT shop: hybrid vehicles in place of regular ones, or software tools for managing lights and A/C in your buildings. The bottom line is, any project you implement to reduce energy affects your carbon footprint, but you’re reaping direct benefits down the road.

And there’s one other important difference between outsourcing your carbon-offsetting efforts and implementing them at your company: Once you’ve signed a check and handed it over to the nice executive at CarbonCappers Inc., you can’t really be sure whether the dough is going to erect windmills or pay for that exec’s new speedboat.

I say that because The Financial Times recently reported on “widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organizations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.”

All told, I wouldn’t want to see companies simply jettison their ambitions for a size-zero carbon footprint all together. But I like to think of it this way: If you have an ideal weight in mind, the healthiest route is to invest time and money in a sensible diet and exercise regimen. Eventually, you’ll not only achieve the poundage you desire, but you’ll have more energy and better general habits that you can carry with you. Sure, you could subsist on diet soda and celery for a couple of weeks and hit that weight goal sooner, but in the end, are you really in a better position?

Like the Tab-and-tasteless-greens diet, save the carbon offsets for shedding those last few unsightly pounds of carbon, after you’ve exercised your other energy-conservation options.