Carbon Neutrality Makes the Grade

(page 2 of 3)

"It is a very big business issue, so I think it is a skill set that is quite valuable for business school students, if they get their hands dirty and work at this," Romm says.

Translating Leadership into a Career

Eric Kuhle, a second-year Thunderbird student and founder of the school's Sustainability in Energy & Environment Club, is just the type of student Romm predicts businesses will be clamoring for in the next decade or two.

Determined to pursue a career in the carbon offset field, Kuhle was part of a team that compiled a report for Thunderbird last year mapping out the school's carbon footprint. Among his findings? Thunderbird's total emissions for the 2005-06 academic year were 16,086 metric tons, or 23.87 metric tons per student. A metric ton is a measurement of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. To put that in perspective, a ton of carbon dioxide is emitted when a person travels 2,000 miles in an airplane or drives 1,900 miles in a midsize car. At Thunderbird, where much of the faculty and student body are international, 60% of emissions come from air travel, Kuhle noted in the report.

His knowledge on the topic impressed administrators so much that they named him a student government sustainability chair this year. As part of the job, he is helping to judge the President's Campus Greening Challenge, which asked first-year students to submit plans on ways to lower campus carbon outputs.

While passionate about his work on campus, Kuhle is also practical; he hopes to use his experience at Thunderbird to propel him into a career in the field, possibly as a carbon trader. "Being able to do this and, particularly in a business setting on campus, is not just about being green, it's about being profitable," Kuhle says.

The Carbon Market and Its Critics

Students like Kuhle are jumping into a burgeoning retail market. The voluntary carbon market—loosely defined as a market that caters to people who want to pay to offset the greenhouse gases they create—grew to 23.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2006 and is worth about $91 million, according to a 2007 report from Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance. Still, the voluntary market is just a small slice of the larger carbon trading market, which serves businesses mandated to reduce their emissions and is estimated by the World Bank to be worth about $30 billion in 2006.

The concept of carbon neutrality has been around since the late 1990s and was first embraced by companies like Stonyfield Farm, which sought to neutralize its greenhouse gas footprint through purchasing carbon offsets. Since that time, individuals, families, companies—and now business schools—have followed suit, hoping to lead a carbon-neutral lifestyle.

But the movement has its critics, including Frank O'Donnell, president of the nonprofit Clean Air Watch, who believes people throw money at the problem, rather than making concrete changes in their lifestyles, like riding a bike instead of driving a car to reduce emissions.

"It is in effect a modern version of the medieval indulgence, where people are throwing all their money at an offset and just going back to driving their SUVs all over town," O'Donnell says, recalling the Catholic church's controversial practice of selling indulgences to people who wanted to eliminate or lessen punishments for their sins.

Complicating matters, the growth of the retail carbon offset provider market has been rapid, with environmental advocates such as O'Donnell likening it to the Wild West. Some outfits are taking money for reforesting projects that either never occur or have already taken place, he says. While there are reputable providers, consumers often do not conduct enough research, and some get scammed (BusinessWeek.com, 10/29/07).