Benefits

Business Benefits

Creating a Competitive Advantage

A Climate Cool™ strategy can benefit companies as well as the environment in many ways, enhancing the companies' bottom-line returns and establishing them as environmental leaders.

Climate Cool™ can differentiate products or services in a crowded marketplace
Climate Cool™ can establish or strengthen ties with the local community through locally-based offset investments
Climate Cool™ products and services can build trust and goodwill with customers, suppliers, communities, activist groups, and other stakeholders
Climate Cool™ initiatives can reduce financial risk, provide first-mover advantage, and facilitate access to target markets

Through the Network, forward-thinking companies can collaborate with other companies and organizations to develop new Climate Neutral products and partnerships that can significantly enhance their competitive position.

Examples of Climate Cool™ Initiatives

BP Amoco recently partnered with Interface Inc. to create a Climate Cool™ Fuel gas card. Here's how it worked: When Interface employees use the "Cool Fuel" card at BP fueling stations, a portion of their purchases goes towards investments that will offset the carbon emissions created by burning the gasoline they purchase. Meanwhile, BP, as a preferred supplier, has the opportunity to potentially increase sales, while both companies build their reputations as innovative leaders in the region. Results to date have exceeded expectations.

Comparable results have been achieved by Jiffy Lube which launched a pilot Climate Cool™ oil change service with Nike employees, eliminating the greenhouse gas impacts associated with driving the 3000 miles between oil changes. Emulating BP's approach to deliver Climate Cool™ services at "price parity", this unique partnership achieved sales for Jiffy Lube that again significantly exceeded results from more traditional marketing channels.

Interface, Inc. a founding member of the Climate Neutral Network, offers the Cool Carpet™ option, a program developed in response to a growing number of environmentally-conscious specifiers who are concerned with the long-term effects of their product choices and investments. Interface's Cool Carpet option results in a "climate neutral" product, meaning that the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the full life cycle of the product are offset. The product life cycle includes raw material acquisition, manufacturing, transportation, use and maintenance and end-of-life disposition. Results have been so compelling that Interface has expanded its Climate Cool™ flooring sales to continents spanning US, Canada, Australia and Europe.

Dow BioProducts recently certified their WOODSTALK product Climate Cool™. Incorporating waste straw that would otherwise be burned in the fields, Dow's certification has not only attracted strong sales interest from the green building arena (a key target market) but also capitalized carbon savings of substantial financial value. Network efforts are currently targeted at strengthening incentives that would reward Climate Cool™ products in key target markets such as the green building arena.

Environmental & Community Benefits

Community Benefits

One of the biggest motivations for companies and consumers to seek Climate Cool™ certification lies with the powerful community benefits that CO₂ reductions programs can generate for their local communities. Carbon reduction projects, known technically as offset investments, can work in concert with efforts to tackle pressing community issues ranging from education in local schools to traffic congestion.

Increase Funding for Local Schools:
The carbon offsets required to zero out any remaining greenhouse gas emissions after a company has performed all practical internal reductions can be invested in local schools to channel more money into education and tackle climate change. For example, offset monies can help pay for projects to replace incandescent light bulbs in school classrooms with more energy-efficient compact fluorescents or install solar panels on school roofs. This reduces the schools' energy consumption, and thus their carbon emissions, while simultaneously reducing their utility bills. The resulting cash savings can be used for more critical educational activities, effectively increasing the schools' budgets.

Some examples of the offset programs in which our first three Climate Cool™ certified companies have invested include:

Ties with the community are symbolized by a schoolhouse.

A series of boiler replacement programs in Portland, Oregon public schools which reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by tens of thousands of tons; put over a quarter million dollars in direct investment and energy savings into the schools' pockets; and in one case allowed a unique colony of Vaux's swifts to nest undisturbed in the old chimney structure, preserved in part through the investment of our Climate Neutral certified companies.
A Solar Rural Electrification project in Sri Lanka, featured an innovative financial structure that turned the normally prohibitive costs of photovoltaic panels into a cost effective option for rural families.

Other community benefits that Climate Cool™ offsets have delivered include:

Cleaner, safer transportation for children's schools buses through upgrades to biodiesel fuels
Reduced air pollution and traffic congestion through the synchronization of city stop lights
Innovative energy efficiency investments through faith networks to bring cash flow savings to hospices, schools and other community centers
Critical economic development for small scale family farms and Native American communities through establishing renewable wind energy systems
The purchase of energy generated from coalbed and landfill methane, ensuring the continued profitability of this unique way of converting waste gases that would otherwise contribute to the earth's climate change into energy, creating a double emissions savings.

Climate Cool™ offset programs are designed collaboratively with participating companies, their employees and other critical stakeholder constituencies to identify the most compelling community agendas that their Climate Cool™ offset monies could help tackle, with a strong emphasis on how these carbon reduction programs could most effectively be implemented on the ground.

Environmental Benefits

The Climate Neutral Network is building a pathway towards a better climate future, one that is independent of national or international regulations. Instead it leverages core economic interests to catalyze innovative, powerful market-based actions that result in major greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Bearing in mind that total US annual emissions of CO₂ are over 6 billion metric tons and that to meet the international expectations raised under the Kyoto treaty would require a 3-4% reduction in this base, the initiatives catalyzed by the Climate Neutral Network could account for substantial portions of these reductions in US GHG emissions.

For example:

If 20% of three oil companies' customers purchased Climate Neutral certified "Cool Fuel," it would generate roughly 40 million metric tons of CO₂ reductions or a 0.7% reduction in US emissions.
If 20% of two leading airlines' customers traveled on Climate Neutral certified "Cool Class,", this would generate roughly 40 million metric tons of CO₂ reductions or a 0.7% reduction in US emissions.
If Climate Neutral warranties were issued on new hybrid automobiles, this would generate roughly 100 million metric tons of CO₂ or a 1.7% reduction in US emissions.