>> An edible New York. Eating local in the five boroughs — from rooftop honey to fresh-killed chickens. (via 3qd)
>> El Sol County Beach in Malibu: Publicly owned, privately used. Rich neighbors pressure county officials, who’ve kept the beach inaccessible to the public.
>> Name Gaiam’s new blog-to-be, win prizes. The Grand Prize is a $250 Gaiam gift certificate; 5 runners up get $50 certificates.
>> The difficulty of buying meaningful carbon offsets. “Native Energy had contributed just over 1% of the total cost of the project yet claimed 100% of its carbon reductions….. Without government regulation and mandatory caps on emissions, all that is left to drive offset sales is guilt and marketing.” I don’t know if it’s as simple as that, but the article gives you a good sense of why it’s difficult to figure out whether your carbon offset — even from a well-respected group like Native Energy — is really offseting your eco-sins.
Anyone know where El Sol is exactly? I’ll make a point of going up there to spend the day. This sort of plutocratic allocation of state resources really ticks me off.
Comment by Brian — September 2, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
These rich jerks really tick me off. I will join you Brian in visiting this spot and putting new signs!
Comment by Cajeta — September 4, 2007 @ 9:11 am
Regarding the LA Times story –
The reporter, Alan Zarembo, did get some things correct, but he failed to communicate some critical facts and background that complete the picture without a misleading slant.
We have posted our Letter to the Editor of the LA Times on our website
http://www.nativeenergy.com
And, we have posted a more powerful and personal message in response, the Van Gilders’ Letter to the Editor
http://www.nativeenergy.com/News/LATimes_Dovan_letter_9-7-07.pdf
Recognizing the complexity of the carbon offsets market; NativeEnergy has had to correct similar media inaccuracies during the past 7 years.
Aware of the factual errors made in this article, we simply wanted to bring the accurate details to your attention and clarify the misleading statements, as they could be further mistaken as legitimate in future media coverage.
First, NativeEnergy typically contracts with projects before they are constructed and begin operation. We then turn to the marketplace to allow individuals or businesses, to purchase the offsets — together they fully subscribe the offsets, enabling the payment that is made to the project for its expected lifetime of carbon offsets.
A project may be fully funded and operational by the time the offset is sold – but this does not invalidate the carbon offset. Rather, it is NativeEnergy’s promise to the project that helps it secure the other necessary financing, such as grants. And as you know, when done properly and with a reputable carbon offset partner, offsetting is absolutely real and does make a difference in reducing the amount of CO2 that otherwise would be emitted.
Next, in reality, the offsets for “An Inconvenient Truth” related carbon footprints are actually from 4 different, new ‘help build’ projects that were moving toward construction; 3 of which have now been completed. Indeed, the footprint of “An Inconvenient Truth” is relatively small – that’s a good thing – and offsetting is a good deal. There is no other way to get to zero global warming impact. It’s easy, effective and inexpensive. And, in this country, it is currently 100% voluntary.
In regards to NativeEnergy specific projects, we began discussions with the Van Gilder family at their kitchen table in 2003 – not in 2006, as Alan writes – and agreed to purchase carbon offsets from the Van Gilder’s to allow them to meet their portion of the financing package early in 2004. The project proceeded with construction in 2006 after additional funding from other sources was secured, including additional payments from NativeEnergy. Certainly we were not the reason the farm wanted to build the project, but we were an important funding component. Although they may have been surprised that there was a market for the carbon offsets – an unexpected bonus, perhaps – the role in helping them finance the project is an indisputable fact.
David Van Gilder has confirmed this in his Letter To The Editor of the LA Times.
Concerning the Alaska Native Village wind project, Mr. Zarembo got some facts right, but missed a few and trivialized an important feature of the complete “barriers” tests used to assess project-specific additionality. The situation was quite different for AVEC’s wind project in Alaska. As we openly discussed with the reporter, the role of offsets in this case was to provide operations and maintenance funding – not to add more capital dollars that were being met mostly by federal grants. This important distinction was not mentioned in the LA Times story. In this instance, the issue is not “whether the blades turn or not,” but whether they turn often enough. This project met NativeEnergy’s strict additionality criteria due to the first of its kind installation and technology barriers. Performing a critical role in enabling the replicability of these projects is a creditable use of carbon offset funding.
These are a few of the misconceptions and errors conveyed in this article. We hope this clarifies some of the murky waters and prevents perpetuating inaccuracies to the general public. NativeEnergy highly values education and transparency; as this complex issue quickly becomes mainstream, the truth emerges, and with increasing community and business support we continue to succeed in building a more sustainable energy future.
Thank you again for your continued interest and partnership, for working with us to help support high quality carbon offsets from new projects like the Dovan Farm project.
Respectfully,
Billy Connelly
NativeEnergy, Inc.
http://www.NativeEnergy.com
Comment by billy connelly — September 8, 2007 @ 6:57 am