Contact: Alison Murphy Marketing Communications Manager

Offsetters 604 699 2672

alison.murphy@offsetters.ca

                                            November 2011

       

Contents

1. At-A-Glance Fact Sheet  

2. Company overview

Who we are

What we do

How we do it

Our partners

Our team  

3. FAQs  

4. Top tips for lowering your emissions  

5. Evaluating carbon offsets and offset providers

       

At-A-Glance Fact Sheet  

Name Offsetters Clean Technology Inc.

Founded 2005

Founders Dr. James Tansey

• University of British Columbia Associate Professor and Executive Director ISIS, A Research Centre (Sauder School of Business, UBC)

Dr. Hadi Dowlatabadi • Canada Research Chair & Professor of Applied Mathematics and Global Change at the University of British Columbia

Senior Leadership Team

James Tansey – CEO Farran Hobbs – COO Kari Grist – Senior Vice President, Marketing & Client Engagement Simon Hutton – Vice President, Portfolio Management & Trading

Mailing Address

Suite 1500 – 1055 W. Hastings Street Vancouver, British Columbia V6E 2E9 Canada Telephone

604 699 2650

Our Mission

We promote a shift to a low carbon future by helping our clients to understand, reduce, and offset their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.   Services Provided

• GHG management strategies and tools for organizations and individuals • Identification and assessment of GHG emissions for organizations, products and

services including life cycle inventories • Development of carbon offset projects • Sales of carbon offsets to organizations and individuals from both Offsetters’

own projects, as well as international high quality projects • Life cycle inventory, or product footprint • Policy advisory services

       

Key Clients and Partners

• FortisBC

• Aimia (formerly Groupe Aeroplan)

• Harbour Air Seaplanes

• The Ledcor Group of Companies

• Vancity Credit Union

• Pacific Carbon Trust

• More than 100 different partners across all sectors

Key Projects

• Ground Source Heat Pump installations

• Biomass Fuel-Switching in greenhouses and other industrial sites

• Energy Efficiency

• Gold Standard renewable energy projects

Total tonnes offset up to 2008 more than 35,000

Total tonnes offset up to 2010 more than 250,000

Total tonnes offset up to 2012: 1,000,000 (projection)

Employees 15

Website www.offsetters.ca

Media Contact alison.murphy@offsetters.ca

       

Company Overview

Who we are

We are Canada’s first and leading provider of high quality carbon management solutions. We were founded in 2005, by Dr. James Tansey and Hadi Dowlatabadi, both professors at the University of British Columbia who specialize in business, the environment and climate change, when they saw a need for a local, high-quality source of carbon offsets.

Along with the two professors, we got our start with two grants: one from Environment Canada and one from Vancity Credit Union. Initially we focused on providing individual consumers with emission reductions that we purchased from trusted international projects. Soon our business grew to include organizations as well as individuals, and, before we knew it, we were developing our own offset projects in Canada.

We’ve since expanded to providing a full suite of carbon management solutions for businesses and individuals, including conducting carbon inventories; helping plan and measure emissions reductions; developing carbon offset projects in Canada and sourcing offsets from Gold Standard projects around the world.

Today, we have a staff of 15 based in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. Our team includes experts in greenhouse gas measurement, highly skilled engineers who work on developing new offset projects, and a leader in the marketing of social and environmental services.

Firsts

• First Canadian company to co-develop a Gold Standard cookstove project in Africa

• First Official Supplier of Carbon Offsets in Olympic Games history, commencing with the sponsorship Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games

• First developer of high-quality carbon offset projects in British Columbia and in Canada

• First Canadian company to be listed on a Verified Carbon Standard (formerly Voluntary Carbon Standard) registry—Markit

• Largest initial supplier to the Pacific Carbon Trust, a BC Crown Corporation

       

Endorsements

We are proud of the company we keep and have been recognized as Canada’s top provider of carbon offsets by experts in the environmental field, as well as public and private sector organizations.

“Offsetters have been brilliant in helping Aimia to quantify our greenhouse gas emissions, to understand those measurements and to look for reductions. They are the experts we turn to, year over year, for ethical and exact interpretations of our worldwide data, and for our commitment to transparent participation in the Carbon Disclosure project.” - Aimia (formerly Groupe Aeroplan) “Harbour Air is confident that all funds are going to real, additional, permanent projects in British Columbia with social and economic value for the Province.” - Harbour Air Seaplanes “Offsetters was the ideal partner to most thoroughly and efficiently complete our first product Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) project. Their extensive experience with LCAs, offsets and corporate communications was extremely valuable to Nautica both for this project as well as our long-term sustainability strategy.” - Nautica

“We are very happy with the quality of offsets supplied by Offsetters. Pioneers in their field, Offsetters are leaders in the effort to create a high quality supply of local offsets." - Vancity

What we do

We help organizations and individuals understand, reduce, and offset their carbon emissions.

We develop and procure carbon offset projects using the highest quality standards, focusing on permanent reductions from energy efficiency and renewable energy projects with further social and environmental co-benefits.

We partner with organizations to create unique programs that enhance their brand and make a difference.

       

Solutions for businesses

Businesses have many reasons for understanding and lowering their carbon emissions. In addition to making a positive impact on the environment, lowering emissions can reduce operating costs, have positive marketing benefits and improve employee attraction and engagement levels.

We work with companies to measure their current footprint, identify opportunities for reductions and provide high quality offsets for purchase if companies wish to reduce their footprints beyond what internal reductions can achieve.

To-date, we have worked with more than 150 companies in North America who are making a difference.

Solutions for individuals

Each person emits greenhouse gases through their daily activities of transportation and resource consumption. We help people understand the carbon impact of their activities, and plan reductions they can make in their own lives. We also create opportunities for them to invest in high-quality carbon offset projects, and, by pooling the investments of many individuals, we can develop and fund projects individuals alone could not do.

We have options to: calculate and offset your driving for a year, calculate and offset flights you take, purchase an ‘offset gift certificate’ for a friend (a truly low-impact gift!) or just purchase tonnes in bulk if you already know how much you want to offset.

How we do it

All of our greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories are completed according to the most rigorous industry standards including the World Resources Institute’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the International Standards Organization 14064. We calculate emissions using the most up-to-date data from power suppliers, government and academic research.

When working with businesses, we work with all levels of the organization to identify opportunities for internal reductions, such as making changes to their supply chain, selecting alternative fuels or even such simple things as printing on double-sided, recycled paper! Once changes are implemented, we continue to work with businesses to track their year-over-year progress towards their reduction targets.

If businesses and individuals want to purchase carbon offsets, we provide them with the opportunity to purchase offsets which are of the highest quality. When evaluating which projects to develop and invest in, we only choose projects that are:

• Additional: We ensure that the emission reductions are additional to any reductions that would have happened anyway. Our funds help to overcome a barrier (financial and/or technical) that would have otherwise prevented the project from happening.

       

• Real: The emissions are third party validated at the beginning of the project and then verified to have actually happened. We enlist engineering and accounting firms that are accredited to do this. We provide our carbon credits at the end of this process once the emissions reductions have been realized.

• Permanent: The reductions are lasting and cannot be reversed. We also make sure all our projects have significant positive co-benefits in addition to lowering GHG emissions. For example, we provided funding for the installation of ground source heat pumps in a number of community organizations (schools, First Nations band offices, community centres, etc.). The heat pumps had up to 75 per cent lower operating costs than the incumbent technology, and the savings were used to improve the social programs available to users of the facilities. Finally, we recognize the major critiques of carbon offsets and only choose projects that avoid or account for:

• Double Counting: The offset can only be claimed by one person – the final buyer of the carbon credit. We register our offsets on recognized registries (including Markit and the Gold Standard Registry) to ensure this is the case.

• Inconsistent Timescale: Our projects create the emissions reductions right away. Unlike tree planting offset projects, there is no payback time. The emissions reductions take place in the year you buy the offsets or earlier.

• Leakage: We look at all the sources of emissions generated by our projects

and factor these into our carbon accounting. For example, if a project uses a lower emissions fuel source, but requires trucking in that fuel source, then we take the additional transportation emissions into our accounting of the total emissions savings.

These are the same high standards that rigorous certifications such as the Gold Standard and the Verified Carbon Standard (formerly Voluntary Carbon Standard) use. Our projects We invest in projects focusing on permanent reductions from energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Our projects can be found throughout British Columbia and Canada. We work with our project partners (businesses, community organizations, etc.) to find ways of lowering the emissions from their operations.

Our team also sources credits from international Gold Standard or Verified Carbon Standard projects around the world. Though most of our international investments have been made in collaboration with other offset providers, in June 2010, we became the first Canadian company to co-develop a Gold Standard Cookstove project in Africa.

We have over 30 active projects with more on the drawing board. Some projects that have happened with our investment include:

       

Lafarge Cement (Richmond, BC) Carbon funds enabled the cement producer to reduce the amount of coal used in the process of creating cement. Traditionally substantial users of coal, Lafarge is able to reduce the amount burned by replacing a portion of this fossil fuel with biomass and other materials from construction waste. This shift in fuel reduces annual greenhouse gas emissions relative to the baseline.

SunSelect Produce Inc. Carbon funds enabled this greenhouse operator to switch from a natural gas to a biomass boiler to meet the heating needs of an existing commercial greenhouse producing fruits and vegetables. Use of the biomass boiler for most of the facility’s heat requirements reduces annual operating emissions by approximately 7,200 tCO2e relative to the natural gas baseline.

Uganda Efficient Wood Cook Stoves More than 95 per cent of Ugandans rely on fuel wood for cooking. Traditional stoves used for cooking have low efficiencies, increasing the amount of fuel wood required to prepare a meal. These new stoves increase efficiency and reduce fuel wood consumption by more than 50 per cent compared to traditional technology. The aim of the project is to reduce the stove price to an affordable level and to promote it for widespread dissemination. We’re proud to be the first Canadian company to co-develop a Gold Standard cook stove project in Africa

More information about these and other projects can be found online at http://www.offsetters.ca/offset-projects

Our Partners

We are privileged to work with some innovative companies throughout North America, many of whom are both leaders in climate change and as well as leaders in their sector. Because of the work we are doing together, we view our relationships as partnerships in creating real positive change.

Here are some examples of how we’ve worked with a few of our partners to create climate benefits:

       

Vancity, a sustainability leader, initially had mixed feelings about offsets, so they did a heck of a lot of research. After evaluating their own carbon footprint, they formed a committee with members of the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecotrust Canada and the Pembina Institute to develop criteria for their offsets. They then hired a third party environmental expert, the Pembina Institute, to actually find offsets that met their high standards. That’s where we came in. The Pembina Institute determined that our offsets met Vancity’s criteria, and we worked with them to develop a portfolio of renewable energy projects just for Vancity. In 2008, Vancity was the first North American-based financial institution to become carbon neutral.

Harbour Air Seaplanes was our first major customer (thanks again Harbour Air), and they, in turn, were the first carbon neutral airline in North America! Back in 2007, we worked with Harbour Air to inventory the emissions for their entire operations, identified opportunities for internal reductions and came up with an offset purchase strategy.

Harbour Air offsets all their emissions, and rolls a small offset surcharge into price of each ticket to cover the flight emissions. They are now on their fourth year of carbon neutrality and have seen many positive benefits, including increased passenger traffic.

We’re excited to be working with Aimia (formerly Groupe Aeroplan) — a loyalty industry leader with global reach committed to working towards reducing climate impact.

Since 2007, Aimia has participated in the Carbon Disclosure Project, an independent international effort that collects high-quality carbon footprint information from corporations worldwide.

In Canada, Aeroplan’s Carbon Offset Program was created as part of its Green It Up program to enable members to use Aerpolan Miles to buy carbon credits to offset the emissions generated by their air, travel, car rentals and everyday activities.

       

If companies were people, we like to think that Offsetters and Rethink are great friends.

Rethink is a Vancouver-based, independent advertising company that offsets all of their corporate flights through us, and is in the process of completing another GHG inventory. They developed our brand identity and have worked to bring the Offsetters story to the street – literally. Their Olympic activation for us, “Without winter, there’s no Winter Games” went on to be recognized with several industry awards.

Capital One Canada embarked on a path towards environmental sustainability in 2006 when they reduced their impact on the environment by switching 95 per cent of their mail advertising to 100

per cent recycled paper. In 2010, they became Carbon Neutral with Offsetters, after we worked closely with them to review their footprint and associated reduction strategies and finally, to help them offset what could not be reduced.

To see a full listing of our forward thinking partners, check out our website at www.offsetters.ca.

Bobwheeling during the 2010 Winter Games through the streets of downtown Vancouver. Photo credit: L. Iglesias

       

Our Team

The offsetting industry in North America is very new and exciting and we have some of the best and the brightest on our team. Our staff has a broad range of expertise, from engineering to social sciences to marketing, and has tonnes (pardon the pun) of interesting life experience.

Our executive team consists of:

James Tansey PhD – CEO & Founder James founded Offsetters in 2005 and currently sits as our CEO. He is also Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business and the Executive Director of ISIS, A Research Centre (Sauder School of Business, UBC). James' research activities cover a number of areas including social enterprise, climate change and social impacts and acceptability of new technologies.

Following the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, James was selected as one of four international advisers working with the United Nations Environment Programme on the environmental strategy for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

In 2010, James was recognized as a Top 40 Under 40 by Business in Vancouver and was a Pacific finalist in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year® 2010 Awards.

Farran Hobbs – COO Farran has more than 15 years of experience in finance, operations and business management. She most recently worked in the bio-medical device manufacturing and pharmaceuticals industries where she held roles of Chief Financial Officer and Director of Finance. Prior to the bio-tech industry, Farran worked as a consultant with the corporate finance and business development group at BC Hydro. She also worked in the telecom industry in a corporate finance role where she developed business plans and financial models for a global telecom network and was involved in raising more than $4 billion through an IPO and other debt and equity issuances.

Kari Grist – Senior Vice President, Marketing & Client Engagement As SVP Marketing & Client Engagement, Kari is accountable for defining and building the brand, building Offsetters business, and creating lasting relationships with our customers. Kari oversaw Offsetters successful sponsorship and activation of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games as the first official supplier of carbon offsets in the history of the Olympic movement. Offsetters Olympic activation went on to be recognized with several Marketing industry awards.

Kari is a senior marketing executive with more than 20 years strategic marketing and brand management experience. Kari joined Offsetters in late 2008 after six years as VP Marketing with Vancity, Canada's largest credit union, where she led their brand revitalization which won almost every major marketing award there is to win in North America. Prior to Vancity, Kari held a number of marketing roles with Canadian Airlines.

       

Kari is a former board member of Hope Air, a national non-profit organization.

Simon Hutton –Vice President, Portfolio Management & Trading Simon has an extensive background in both the financial and carbon markets. He holds a degree in Finance and International Business from McGill University and has earned his Derivatives Management Specialist Designation from the Canadian Securities Institute. After six years of working in London and Sydney’s top trading houses, Simon went on to pursue post-graduate study at the University of Sydney, where he examined the impacts of the Clean Development Mechanism on the efficiency of the European Emissions Trading Scheme. Since then, he has acted as a consultant to a Canadian investor syndicate on carbon credit origination and served as a strategy consultant to a number of Australian businesses.

       

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a carbon offset? A “carbon offset” (aka a carbon credit, a VER, or a CER) occurs when an individual or organization emits a given amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) but invests in measures that will pull the equivalent volume of GHG out of the atmosphere or prevent other emissions from taking place at all. Carbon offsets are a financial instrument representing this reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Although there are many kinds of GHGs, offsets are measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent for simplicity (i.e., all other gases are converted to equivalent amounts of CO2 based on their global warming potential).

What is a carbon footprint? A “carbon footprint” (also known as a carbon inventory, carbon audit or GHG inventory) is an accurate assessment of all the greenhouse gases being emitted by a person or business in a time period (usually a year). The most common standards used for conducting carbon footprints are the World Resource Institute’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the ISO 14064. We use these standards when conducting our carbon footprints.

Is offsetting a permit to pollute? Definitely not! Every individual and organization has a responsibility to lower their emissions whenever possible: walking or cycling instead of driving; teleconferencing instead of flying; etc. But there are still many activities for which we do not yet have low emissions alternatives. Offsetting is just one way individuals and companies can actively contribute to climate change mitigation, in addition to the reductions they can make in their own activities.

What makes Offsetters different from other carbon offset suppliers? We’ve been developing projects in Canada the longest and we provide the highest quality offsets. Every offset purchased from Offsetters is third-party validated and verified to be additional, real, permanent and unique.

Offsetters provides a cost-effective, simple and efficient method to reduce the negative climate impacts of our daily lives. Every offset purchase not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but also contributes to sustainable development and improved livability through the projects that we invest in.

       

What types of projects do you invest in? Offsetters primarily invests in energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. We enable commercial and industrial property owners to install low GHG emitting systems in place of traditional systems with high GHG emissions by investing the difference in cost between the systems. Because the low GHG system would not have been selected without our support, this investment is an offset.

Are your credits Gold Standard certified? In 2011. we became the first Canadian company to co-develop a Gold Standard cookstove project in Africa. You can learn more about our Household Wood Cookstoves project in Uganda at www.offsetters.ca/offset-projects. In addition to co-developing the Gold Standard household wood cookstoves project in Uganda, we also purchase and sell Gold Standard credits that are sourced from projects around the world. We have a long history of developing our projects domestically, including fuel-switching projects, energy efficiency projects, and ground-source heat-pump installations. The Gold Standard certification is only available to projects in developing countries; therefore our domestic projects are not eligible. Our domestic projects are developed to the Verified Carbon Standard or the BC Emissions Offset Regulation. Our domestic projects developed prior to these standards also meet these best-in-class standards.

How does Offsetters ensure that carbon credits are not double-counted? Double counting occurs when multiple parties take credit for the environmental attribute of the carbon reductions. For example, if a company reduced their emissions and claimed that they were carbon neutral, but also sold the credits to us to sell to our clients, both the company and our clients would be claiming these emissions.

This is a major problem in the carbon market. To mitigate this, we keep careful track of our credits internally and register our credits on ‘registries’ such as Markit and the Gold Standard Registry. These registries track each credit that has been created and retires them once they are sold. Buyers can then check to make sure that credits they are about to buy have not already been sold or used.

       

Top tips for lowering your emissions

Save your money It’s one thing to buy partially recycled products and ‘greener’ items, but trying to cut back on what you buy in the first place is even better. Buying pre-loved clothes from consignment or slightly used furniture means you’ll save money and prevent the creation of more stuff.  

Give more "thoughtful" gifts Buying presents—and wrapping and shipping them —produces lots of emissions. Giving gifts that are services (a gift certificate for a massage, for example) can greatly lower the emissions of your gift. Sure, this tip might not make that much difference with each gift, but think of the implications over a holiday season or a whole lifetime of gift giving, or if your friends and family started adopting the habit too!  

Drive less, and drive smarter if you do drive Before you go: make sure your tires are inflated, change your oil regularly and keep your car tuned up. While driving: Be gentler on acceleration and braking, and stick to the speed limit (driving slower uses less fuel for the same distance travelled).

Eat Less Meat You don’t have to go vegan, but try cutting back on meat one day per week. Researchers at the University of Chicago calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 per cent, it would be as if everyone switched from a standard sedan to an ultra-efficient hybrid vehicle equivalent.  

Make simple, smart office decisions There are lots of simple steps to reduce office emissions and in most cases save money. Try installing motion sensitive lights in rooms like bathrooms or copy rooms, switching your default to double-sided printing (same with black and white printing), using recycled paper and programming computers and monitors to ‘sleep’ or shut off when not in-use.  

Fly less for business With meetings, sometimes you just have to be there face-to-face. But before you book your plane tickets, think about whether you really need to be there in person. Consider using low-cost telephone or video conferencing options instead and you could be saving time, money and greenhouse gas emissions.  

       

Ride your bike or walk to work one day a week Avoiding your car just one day a week, according to the World Wildlife Fund, can save 270 kg of greenhouse gas emissions per year.  

Turn off your computer monitor We can’t say it enough. Even if you’re just away for 15 minutes, turn off your computer monitor. Up to 75 per cent of the energy needed to power your computer is for your monitor.  When you add up all the little—and the not so little—things that you can do to reduce carbon emissions it equals a significant impact. Together we can take action on climate change.

       

Evaluating carbon offsets and offset providers

Getting background information

We’ve all heard that the voluntary carbon market is like the ‘Wild West’ with no rules, and everyone has heard about some of the early stories around carbon offsets. This may be an outdated view (since new standards and regulations have become widely adopted); however, it is important for offset consumers to be ‘carbon literate’ – to know enough about the offset market to ensure you are really making a difference. It is a new, emerging technical space and can sometimes be confusing. Here are a few tips and additional reading that we hope help you.

Some science-based, non-profit, respectable sources for background information are:

An overview of carbon offsets by The David Suzuki Foundation: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/What_You_Can_Do/carbon_offsets.asp

A consumer’s guide to retail carbon offset providers by Clean Air Cool Planet http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/ConsumersGuidetoCarbonOffsets.pdf

Deciding which type of offset is right for you

There are lots of things to consider when choosing an offset provider. Some things you might want to think about are:

Local or international Offset projects often have positive co-benefits for the region in which the project takes place. For this reason, some people prefer international credits, which can contribute to sustainable development, while others prefer domestic projects, so these benefits stay right at home.

Certified, and to what standard In the past few years some very good standards have become common in the voluntary carbon market. The Gold Standard and the Verified Carbon Standard are some examples. While having a certification is important, many projects are not certified due to the high cost of achieving certification, a backlog of projects waiting to be certified (especially in the case of the VCS) and other reasons.

       

Project Type Investigate the types of projects a company offers, since each provider will have a different mix of projects and project types. These could include renewable energy (windfarms, methane capture from livestock), reforestation, fuel switching and many more. You may want to pick a project that has special meaning to you.

Picking an offset provider

Finally, there are some principles that all reputable offset providers adopt. Make sure you find out if an offset provider:

1. Calculates the emissions of projects in accordance with international standards

2. Has third party validation and verification for each project to deliver the stated amount of carbon reductions

3. Has transparency in project type, size, amount of credits, etc

4. Has an internal or external registry for tracking and retiring credits, which should be transparent to consumers

5. Has several projects and/or several project types (this allows for protection against the failure of an individual project)

Check to see if they have reputable clients, ask anyone you consider an expert, and don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call the offset provider if you have more questions.