We often hear about a carbon neutral future. But how and when will we get there?
Perhaps sooner than you think...
When Boardwalk Capital Management became a Certified B Corporation more than five years ago, we joined some of the most exemplary companies on the planet. Companies like Patagonia, Seventh Generation and Ben & Jerry's regularly set a high bar of corporate responsibility for the rest of us to strive for. They are known as some of the best employers, community citizens and environmental stewards. People want to work for them and consumers value their products. And they typically run on clean energy.
While we're no Patagonia, we have sought to follow their lead where possible. And this month, Boardwalk accomplished an important milestone in our efforts to be good environmental stewards. We had long utilized renewable energy for the electricity we consume. And now, we can count our natural gas usage in the clean category with carbon offsets for 100% of our consumption.
So, Boardwalk is now 100% powered by clean energy -- and without putting solar panels on the roof, or a windmill out back. The point of this note is to show that it was easy to do and not terribly expensive. We didn't have to make a massive investment to accomplish this goal. Others made that investment, and we availed ourselves of it.
Our wind and solar-generated electricity isn't even coming from the cheapest source of clean power, but it's still only a 10% price premium to the coal dominated generation provided by our local utility. Likewise, we were able to offset the carbon emissions of our natural gas for far less than 5% of our bill. To us, those seem like relatively small prices to pay for a livable planet.
Check with your utility. You might find that it's cheaper than you expect to clean up your act!