Blue Planet Summit Generates Tons of Positive Energy with a Zero Footprint
 
Carbon-offsetting usually only involves measuring and reducing event-related global warming pollution, but Blue Planet Foundation wanted to take it further by more tangibly helping change the energy culture. To follow is an overview of the process Blue Planet Foundation is going through to create an innovative solution that helps address the global warming and energy challenges.

Carbon Offsetting the Blue Planet Summit

1) Measure the Summitʻs Carbon Footprint

Blue Planet Foundation has teamed up with Evolution Sage to measure and offset the summitʻs total global warming pollution. Evolution Sage provides easy & affordable, local solutions to help Hawaii become more energy self-reliant while reducing global warming pollution. Their carbon footprinting approach offers the highest level of accuracy and comprehensiveness available today.

One method uses highly detailed economic data gathered by the government to allocate emissions across the entire economy. This is the most comprehensive, conservative and accurate way of calculating the impacts of global warming pollution.

The other technique is a detailed, bottom-up look at the energy use and global warming pollution emitted for products and services, including the materials and packaging, use of energy in mining and manufacturing, transportation distances, disposal and other factors. The disadvantages of this approach are that a lot of the needed data is not available or carries errors. It’s also hard to decide where to stop calculating, so we quantify the major emissions sources like:
• travel to the host location
• local road transportation
• energy consumed by the event venue
• energy used through stays at local hotels or homes.

... some smaller emission sources include:
• transportation of goods the event needs
• event organizer travel during planning and preparation
• energy consumed by the event office
• paper use
• waste generation.

2) Offset Event-Related Emissions

Carbon offsets can be used to minimize the impacts of emissions from air travel, energy use, vehicle use, etc. Blue Planet Foundation has committed to purchasing carbon offsets to cover the total amount of emissions the Blue Planet Summit is responsible for - making the Summit carbon neutral!

Provide energy efficiency/resource conservation solutions with the greatest Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) - LED bulbs, low flow showerheads and faucet aerators.
    - Lighting and water heaters, on average account for nearly 50% of a households energy consumption if not more. LED bulbs are 90% more efficient than incandescent bulbs, last 50 times longer and contain no toxic lead or mercury. Low flow showerheads and faucet aerators save as much as 50% of the normal water consumed. Besides saving water, there is an additional electricity savings due to not having to heat up as much cold water.

3) Help Change the Energy Culture

Blue Planet Foundation recognizes that we are currently borrowing from our childrenʻs future and is committed to helping facilitate community betterment, so that the people and the planet may live prosperously in natural balance for generations to come. While brainstorming to figure out the best place to begin, it became apparent to us all that the children are the future, so we should begin with them! That is why we decided to start working with students and teachers from Nanakuli High School to integrate energy and water conservation through a hands-on, real world learning exercise. Students will submit a "Walk Story with Blue Planet" Essay via Blue Planetʻs website and explain what the energy, water and money saved will mean to them, their family, their community and their world. The best 20+ essays will win a partial energy and water efficiency retrofit for their homes.

4) Benchmark Resource Use, Monitor Changes, Share Lessons Learned

The winning students will trade their incandescent lightbulbs for LED bulbs and their showerheads and faucet aerators for low-flow versions. Over the next year, the students will track the difference in energy and water consumption from the previous year to determine how much energy, water and money their family is saving. The families will pledge to use those savings to further support the studentʻs education or use it for more sustainability-oriented solutions. Each household should save nearly $300/yr for over 20 years, which cumulatively for all households is more than $150,000 over the lifetime of the LED bulbs, lowflow showerheads and faucet aerators.