Reducing your carbon footprint can be a challenging task to undertake – challenging because carbon emissions are not tangible objects and therefore not as easily identifiable. Carbon emissions that contribute to climate change come primarily from carbon dioxide (CO2) that is emitted from industry, energy production and our use of vehicles. Although CO2 emissions are not visible they are still harmful to our environment.

According to United Nations, the average American’s yearly carbon footprint is about 20 tons, whereas the global average is less than four tons. It’s time for a diet – a low carbon diet.

To get you started, here are our top five tips for how you can help reduce your carbon footprint (and in many cases, save some money too!):

1. Eat more farm fresh produce. We’re lucky in the Northwest to be surrounded by some of the country’s best farm fresh produce. Eating less meat can have a major impact on the environment. In fact, a study by the University of Chicago found that you can reduce your carbon emissions by 1,400 pounds by eating vegetarian meals five days a week.
2. Invest in alternative energy. About a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity production – and about half our country’s electricity production comes from coal. As a natural gas customer, you’re using gas directly in your home and so you are already using gas more efficiently, but you can take it a step farther and be on the forefront of investing in the latest alternative energy sources through the Smart Energy program.
3. Take a staycation. Airplane travel can be a major culprit in contributing to your carbon footprint. Cutback on air travel and explore the beautiful state we call home. In fact, if you sign up for our Smart Energy Challenge, we’ll give you a head start on your travels with a chance to win a free trip to Crater Lake for you and your family!
4. Change a light – or five. Replacing your five most frequently-used conventional light bulbs with those that have the ENERGY STAR label will greatly reduce your carbon footprint. In fact, if every American household did this, we could prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 10 million vehicles.
5. Be energy efficient. When buying new appliances for your home, take the time to find more energy efficient replacements – you’ll not only save energy but money on your utility bills too. Check out the NW Natural Appliance Center to find efficient fireplaces, tankless water heaters, barbecue grills and kitchen appliances that run off of your natural gas.

At NW Natural, we always encourage customers to use less and offset the rest. With Smart Energy, you can lower your carbon footprint by contributing a portion of your monthly natural gas bill to offset the greenhouse gasses associated with your natural gas use. These tips and many more can be found online at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green, and NW Natural’s Smart Energy.

Guest blog for Smart Energy

By Peter Weisberg, Offset Project Analyst at The Climate Trust

09.18.09

A recent census by the USDA demonstrates that while the number of small and large farms in the United States is growing, medium-size farms are rapidly being consolidated into large-scale operations. I recently visited Smart Energy’s Farm Power digester in the Skagit Valley of Mount Vernon, Wash., and the trip reminded me of the important role medium-sized farms play in our communities. The visit inspired me to share with Smart Energy customers how your contributions are supporting family farms, in addition to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

With funding from Smart Energy customers, Farm Power recently constructed an anaerobic digester that captures methane from the manure of 1,200 cows on two dairies. The manure is converted into electricity—enough to power about 550 homes. You can tour how the digester operates in a slide show at The Climate Trust’s web site www.climatetrust.org/slideshow.html.

In addition to making renewable electricity, one of the byproducts of the digester can be processed into bedding for the cows. In return for fueling the digester with manure, Farm Power is providing Beaver Marsh Farms and Harmony Dairy with free bedding for the cows. Bedding is a significant cost to dairy farmers, and Farm Power estimates that the free bedding will save the dairies $100,000 to $200,000 every year. This cost savings is especially significant at a time when the U.S. dairy industry is suffering financially.

The Farm Power digester is one example of the innovative technologies and practices that can help keep medium-sized farms a part of our communities. This offset project never would have been implemented without the funding from Smart Energy customers. Your support is making a difference to rural economies as well as the environment.

Kevin Maas, left, and his brother, Darryl, not pictured, are the founders of Farm Power, the builder and operator of the digester. Garrett Kuipers, right, is the owner and operator of Beaver Marsh Dairy, where the digester is located.

Guest post provided by Peter Weisberg, Offset Project Analyst at The Climate Trust

The offset geeks at The Climate Trust — myself included — like to joke about the warehouses for our “inventory.” Of course, we don’t have warehouses because our “product” is intangible. We buy greenhouse gas emissions that didn’t occur because of our funding. These emission reductions are called greenhouse gas offsets.

Since offsets aren’t tangible products like light bulbs, it is critical for Smart Energy customers and other buyers to be assured that the offsets they are buying are real and accurately counted. The Climate Trust works diligently to guarantee the quality of projects that the Smart Energy program funds. One key way we do so is by ensuring that Smart Energy funds given to project developers are necessary to overcome barriers to implementation of biogas offset projects.

Take, for example, the Farm Power anaerobic digester in Mount Vernon, Washington. The Climate Trust reviewed the business plan and determined that the project was financially marginal without offset funding. In addition, the bank loan for the project was contingent on offset funding. These factors should assure Smart Energy donors that their funds are responsible for the methane reductions resulting from this project that converts cow manure into energy.  

After contracting to buy offsets from projects like Farm Power, The Climate Trust monitors the projects to ensure they are producing the contracted offsets. For Smart Energy, we are using monitoring protocols such as the Climate Action Reserve, which outline procedures for accurately measuring methane emission reductions. Quality monitoring protocols are very conservative, always erring on the side of underestimating a project’s reductions. Major environmental organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Wilderness Society, Union Of Concerned Scientists and Sierra Club, issued a letter of support for the credible and transparent protocols created by the Climate Action Reserve.

Every year Farm Power and other Smart Energy projects will be monitored according to a reputable protocol. A third-party verifier (with no financial interest in the project) will review the monitoring reports annually to ensure the protocol is accurately applied. Farm Power’s original monitoring data, the verification report from the third party and other data are available online. 

The Climate Trust ensures the additional and accurate measurement of offsets from Smart Energy projects to provide Smart Energy customers the confidence that their biogas offsets are helping to mitigate climate change and to preserve our environment.

For more information about these and other quality criteria, you can read the Offset Quality Initiative’s paper Ensuring Offset Quality.

People don’t normally think of dairy farms as being on the cutting edge of technology advancements, but one dairy farm in eastern Oregon is breaking the stereotype. With the help of NW Natural’s Smart Energy program and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, Threemile Canyon Farms is building a first-of-its-kind biodigester to reduce the carbon dioxide emitted from cow manure.

Cars on the road, heating and lighting our homes all contribute to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but the methane from cow manure is a 21 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. (HINT: This statement should help you answer one of the current Smart Energy Challenge questions. (Submit your guess here.)

A biodigester is an enclosure that traps methane produced by bacteria which breaks down organic matter – essentially waste. The resulting product, biogas, can be used in place of natural gas or propane for a variety of functions.

In short, when organic material decomposes, it emits methane – which is approximately 21 times more potent of the greenhouse gas effect than carbon dioxide. A biodigester speeds up decomposition and captures the methane, protecting the environment.

The biodigester is expected to be fully constructed by the fall of 2009. The project is expected to reduce nearly 1,500 tons of CO2 annually – using the waste of 1,200 cows that produce roughly 144,000 pounds of manure per day!

The farm is located on 93,000 acres and combines both crop farming and dairy operations. Because of its size, Threemile Canyon Farms is an excellent testing ground for new technologies like biodigesters. A functioning biodigester at Threemile Canyon Farms has great potential to become a model for other farms throughout the region.

Check out this photo of the progress that’s been made so far:

The lagoon

May not look like much now, but this is the type of innovative projects that are leading the way to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create alternative energy sources.

We think it’s time for the cows to come home in the fight against climate change.

With Smart Energy, NW Natural has proudly become the first local gas distribution company in the nation to launch a carbon offset program. Smart Energy was developed as a five-year pilot program that offers NW Natural customers an opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint by offsetting their natural gas use. The average NW Natural customer’s gas usage generates about four tons of carbon dioxide each year. Smart Energy helps offset and neutralize that carbon dioxide emission that leading scientists around the world have linked to climate change.

For about the cost of a latte per month, NW Natural customers can participate in Smart Energy and help support local projects that are having a positive effect on the environment. These projects include innovative initiatives such as capturing methane gas from cow manure to keep it out of the atmosphere, where it is a 21 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The captured methane can also be used as a renewable energy source.

Biogas from cow manure is still in its infancy, but realizing the possibilities and working to make it a reality is exactly what the Smart Energy program is designed to do.

While the focus of Smart Energy is to develop biogas for its carbon reduction benefits, it offers other compelling advantages for local farm communities. Biogas projects allow farmers to manage their manure in a way that protects the environment, minimize farm odors, and can help provide new sources of revenues for dairy farmers in our region.

Investment in the Environment

NW Natural does not profit from funds raised through Smart Energy. The money is used to fund greenhouse gas reduction projects, to educate customers about the program, and for the administration of the project through The Climate Trust, a leading non-profit organization and one of the largest institutional purchasers of offsets in the United States. The Climate Trust, which manages Smart Energy funds, supports innovative strategies to reduce, avoid, or capture greenhouse gas emissions.

Smart Energy is only part of the total solution for reducing greenhouse gases. The first step is to conserve energy by being more efficient and reducing our consumption. One of the goals with Smart Energy is to use less and offset the rest.

In fact, because of energy efficiency improvements, natural gas customers have reduced their household consumption so dramatically that there has been virtually no growth in emissions in nearly three decades, despite a 70 percent increase in households using natural gas. (HINT ALERT: This statement should help you answer one of the current Smart Energy Challenge questions. Click here to enter your guess today!)

At NW Natural, we’re offsetting the carbon dioxide emissions created by the natural gas used to heat all of our facilities throughout the five year Smart Energy pilot program, totaling a reduction of 6,160 tons of carbon dioxide.

If you’re curious about how you or your business can sign up for Smart Energy, more information is available here.

Everyone knows what an IQ is – it tells you how smart you are, of course. But what’s a BioIQ? We coined the term (short for Biogas IQ) here at NW Natural to help our customers learn more about important topics including climate change, energy efficiency and NWNatural’s Smart Energy program. Now you can increase your BioIQ, become a more sustainable “smarty” and help the planet all at the same time.

What’s so important about Smart Energy? Well, it’s a first-of-its-kind carbon offset program in Oregon designed to support development of renewable energy projects and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our region, which helps fight climate change. Thanks to support from Smart Energy participants, one of the first renewable energy projects we’re working on is using cow manure waste from an Oregon dairy farm and turning it into biogas, hence the Biogas IQ term.

To increase your BioIQ, we’re hosting the Smart Energy Challenge this summer. Sign up today (free!) at www.smartenergychallenge.com. It’s easy to participate – every two weeks, we’ll ask a challenge question related to things like climate change, energy efficiency and the environment. Each challenge you complete will increase your BioIQ score and better your chances of winning the grand prize. The grand prize is a five-day, four-night stay at Crater Lake Lodge complete with four mountain bikes (to keep!), four cross-country ski packages (yours, forever!) , a hybrid SUV rental and spending money(for the trip!). Three other lucky winners will receive an energy efficient tankless water heater plus installation.

We’re also giving Smart Energy customers another chance to win. If you enroll in Smart Energy before the last challenge ends, you will be automatically granted one entry in the Smart Energy Challenge.

The Smart Energy Challenge continues through October 15. To get you started, we’ll give you a hint to one of the questions in this current challenge:

QUESTION: In Oregon, what nonprofit organization provides incentives and other services to reduce energy use for NW Natural customers?

HINT: Since 2003, NW Natural has partnered with this organization to help customers save enough natural gas to heat 18,300 homes annually.

Be sure to enter your guess today at www.smartenergynw.com/challenge and tell us what you think!