
Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint - landon32
Hi HN,<p>We&#x27;re Mimi, Ben, and Landon, founders of Wren (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectwren.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectwren.com</a>). Wren lets you offset your carbon footprint by funding projects that prevent or sequester greenhouse gas emissions. It works by calculating your carbon footprint and then funding a project of your choice through a monthly subscription. Some of the projects we have right now involve planting forests in East Africa, providing more efficient cookstoves to Ugandan refugees, and preventing deforestation in the Amazon.<p>We met in college, and worked together on numerous side projects and class projects. After a while we decided to try finding a meaningful project that we could work on after graduation. At the time, we didn&#x27;t know much about the science or emerging technologies for mitigating climate change, but we saw carbon offsets and asked ourselves &quot;why isn&#x27;t everyone doing this?&quot; Then we got to work on Wren.<p>Carbon offsets have been around for a while, and with some googling, research, and phone calls anyone can find reliable and transparent projects. Our goal is to make it as easy and enjoyable as possible to offset your footprint. We only work with projects that have good evidence suggesting they&#x27;re long lasting and reliable. We also only work with projects that wouldn&#x27;t happen without support from Wren users. In addition to climate benefits, we prefer projects with strong social impact. Projects listed on Wren reduce lung cancer risk for refugees, provide millions of dollars of economic benefit to subsistence farmers, and protect biodiversity.<p>We see climate change as the most important problem we can work on. Despite growing evidence of the damage it will cause, governments are not taking necessary action. Wren is a way for an individual to have impact today.<p>Most in this space are nonprofits but we are a business. We take a 20% fee on each subscription. This allows us to hire talented engineers, invest in marketing, and raise capital. This way we can build tools that make our projects more transparent and reliable—daily satellite images of forest projects, data visualizations of tree trunk diameters, and other ways we can build more trust for these projects.<p>I&#x27;ve seen a lot of posts on HN recently about climate change and potential solutions so I&#x27;m looking forward to a good discussion :)
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thisjustinm
Part of me says this is great because we need every single action towards
reducing carbon in the atmosphere - big and small - we can get if we want to
even get close to where we need to avoid catastrophe.

Another part of me wonders why would anyone chose Wren over COTAP[0] (for
example) - a non-profit (501c3) where 90.9% of funds go toward their projects,
you get a tax deduction and you can check in on their finances via their non-
profit filings to ensure they are actually allocating funds how they say they
are.

[0] [https://cotap.org](https://cotap.org)

edit: grammar

~~~
bstanfield15
Hi Justin! Ben here, co-founder of Wren. COTAP is a great organization, and
the non-profit filings are a good, fundamental way to verify that they exist
and are doing what they say. In response to why Wren, our philosophy is that
most individuals—perhaps most of you on HN excluded—don't spend the time to
figure how to contribute to stopping climate change, let alone carbon
reduction projects, and certainly don't spend additional time following up on
the additionality and usage of their donations. On top of that, there is a
great opportunity to stitch this community together and create a place where
ideas can be shared around climate reduction, projects can be supported in
tandem, and ideas can be brought forward for how to reduce your carbon
footprint. We're only a few weeks old and a lot of this is ambition, but our
goal is to expand upon an individual's initial excitement around doing
_something_ about climate change.

~~~
gustaf
This is a really good point. The goal of both Wren and COTAP is to have the
most impact solving climate change. Having the most impact doesn't have to
mean you charge the lowest fee - but it does mean removing the most amount of
CO2. If charging a higher fee gives Wren a change to reach millions and get
them to pay more where COTAP is still tiny and have one-time donations that is
a strong argument for why a different model is needed here

~~~
cotap
COTAP here... Thanks to thisjustinm for getting us into the conversation : )

Not to rain on the parade here, just a cautionary tale that is intended to be
helpful...

I would say take a look at Cool Effect which launched in early 2016. Charity
at a glance, but it's also a bottomless-pocketed family from Marin. It cuts
itself checks from the Overlook Intl Foundation, run by the same people. Both
orgs have same CEO. All fine...

But look at the 990s... They have thrown the kitchen sink at this and have
probably dumped $10+ million by now. $800K+ in PR and marketing before they
even launched.

Yet they've only sold well under 1 million tonnes over 3 years. In other
words, back of the envelope they've lost $9 per tonne, even when being a
charitable donation.

Also, divide their 838,715 cumulative tonnes noted on their home page by their
533,115 cumulative members. 1.57 tonnes/member over 3 years, or a half tonne
per member per year. Not anywhere close to the average US footprint.

Half the country doesn't believe in climate change, or it's not a priority, or
is living paycheck to paycheck, or all of the above. Offsetting is not
anywhere on the horizon of their hierarchy of needs. Offsetting is complex,
misunderstood, and controversial (see our op-ed's n TheHill.com for a taste).

When you finally get beyond those nesting subsets, there's enough market size
to go around in theory but it's extremely competitive.

~~~
StavrosK
Sorry, I'm not very familiar with charities, can you clarify what your point
is here? I'm not sure what Cool Effect is or what you're talking about.

~~~
cotap
They're a 501(c)3 private foundation, similar to a 501(c)3 public charity like
COTAP. This makes offsetting contributions tax-deductible. The point is by
making it tax-deductible, along with other things like helping folks offset
monthly, they've already tried to make it as compelling and easy as possible
to offset, but no dice relative to time/effort/$ put in. Similar to
StandforTrees.org. I'm basically saying I don't think Wren is different
enough, other than charging higher margins, something not in their favor. It
is good they're transparent about margins, but that's not unique either.

~~~
StavrosK
I see, thank you. What would you recommend I donate to, if I wanted to
maximize my environmental impact per dollar?

------
OmarIsmail
I'm bias because I prefer YC companies, but I just signed up and started
donating to offset me and my family's carbon impact. When I ran through the
calculator and saw how much damage we were doing (the "if everyone lived like
you the planet would have X months" was VERY effective) that really pushed me
over the edge. Now that I've donated I feel great. I just have to pay a little
bit more (relative to my income/standard of living) and I can live guilt
free?? Sign me up!

And I note that this sounds pretty shilly, but seriously, if you don't donate
to wren go donate to some other reputable climate change mitigating org. Just
donate to something, even for the selfish feeling of smugness and guilt-
removal it brings.

~~~
landon32
Happy to hear it. One thing to mention though: We don't think offsetting is a
license to live guilt free. We still have to do more! Hopefully the carbon
footprint calculator will give you some ideas for how you can cut down your
footprint pretty easily—often something as simple as cutting out red meat or
using public transit more often can make a big difference. Also, progress from
political action will likely be necessary.

That said, we need to pursue all solutions aggressively right now and we
obviously think carbon offsets are a key part of the portfolio that will save
humanity from climate change :)

~~~
OmarIsmail
Maybe you should expand your offering so that I can live guilt free. That's
what I really want. To maintain my standard of living without harming the
planet.

~~~
mancuso5
That’s impossible unfortunately. Money alone won’t “buy” a guilt free,
business-as-usual lifestyle in the face of this emergency. I suggest doing a
bit more research to see for yourself what I mean.

~~~
burke
This is clearly false. Subsidizing the conversion of the the entire world to
clean energy does more good than burning an ounce of coal does harm.

Conversely, planting one tree is insufficient to buy an SUV guilt-free.

There’s inherently a crossover point somewhere.

~~~
landon32
Yeah this is pretty interesting. There's some set of activities (getting
everyone on renewables, making clean construction/ag/transportation cost
effective, political action, etc) that would actually allow someone to be
guilt free. It would be way more money than just offsetting the footprint but
it could fully cover all externalities....

That's kind of theoretical still, but perhaps we could crack it

------
balletbalance
> We take a 20% fee on each subscription.

Why did you choose to charge with a percentage model instead of a flat fee? If
I'm a "hero" and offset double my footprint why should I be charged double for
doing that? Is the cost to you as a business relative to the dollar amount I
donate?

~~~
landon32
This is a great question. To be completely transparent, we are considering a
flat fee because of the reason you stated.

We originally chose a percent fee because it was an industry standard model
that many in the carbon offset space expect. However, we're learning that
industry standard here does not mean it's the best possible option.

The big reason why a % fee is good is because for small donations (e.g. 25% of
someone's footprint) it makes more sense to scale it. A $4 transaction cost on
a $2 impact to the project is crazy.

The tricky thing about our cost structure is that currently we do not have
enough revenue to cover our overhead expenses, so even if we're ignoring the
per transaction cost we need to find a way to cover our overhead (e.g. a place
for us to live so we can hack on this all day)

~~~
johnsimer
what about letting your users get a % of all the money from collected from
users they invite?

They could either receive those as Stripe payouts, or further reinvest their
earnings into curing global warming

i.e. cure global warming MLM style

This could also open up some nice customer acquisition strategies benefit from
asymmetric motivation: teenagers/kids bunch of teenagers (who would spend
hours persuading their rich parents /grandparents to donate $50/mo, such that
in return the teenager earns $5/mo). This may be able to help mitigate the
problem that older people are less likely to believe in the severity of global
warming than younger people - in the same way that your grandma bought your
magazine in 5th grade (so that you could win a prize, not because she actually
cared about the magazine) as part of those gamified magazine fundraisers in
elementary school

~~~
landon32
This is very clever, we might try that. Thanks for sharing!

~~~
johnsimer
would love to schedule a call with you to see if there is any pro-bono help I
could do. I've thought about a couple creative solutions w.r.t to donation
psychology, and have actually pitched ideas similar to Wren before at events.
I do full stack web dev and have a couple of ideas for visualizations/UX that
may help increase donation/referral behavior

[http://calendly.com/johnsimerlink](http://calendly.com/johnsimerlink)

------
JaakkoP
Awesome to see new players in this space! I've been subscribing to
[https://compensate.com/](https://compensate.com/) which seems somewhat
similar to you guys.

Going the business route instead of non-profit sounds like something worth
trying out. Ultimately this is about making the biggest impact on slowing down
the climate change - not about who takes the smallest fees and has the
lightest overhead.

~~~
bstanfield15
Good local focus on Finland w/ Compensate! Like the team behind that product a
lot. Thanks for sharing

------
tom_mellior
> preventing deforestation in the Amazon

Could you say a bit more about how this works in practice? I'm asking because
of vague memories that much of the logging in the Amazon is done illegally
anyway. So presumably just saying "we buy up land and then it's ours and
nobody will log it because it's forbidden" would not be effective.

Am I misremembering things and this is not really a problem? Or do you have
some effective way to ensure that land not meant to be logged is really left
alone?

~~~
landon32
No you're spot on, historically this has been a huge problem. You can make it
illegal to log an area, but people will log anyway.

What's different about the project we listed is that it uses satellite
monitoring and drones to very quickly catch illegal logging. So instead of
loggers taking out 100s of acres over a few weeks, they can be caught on day
one and authorities can be sent to the area. This makes it very difficult to
log at a large scale. They also send several patrols each month to walk
through the area and inspect on the ground to make sure the forest is as
expected.

------
asauce
Congrats on the launch guys! I am always excited to see green startups coming
out of YC.

I'm not sure if you guys are looking for other projects to support, but one
interesting project is Project Vesta[0]. Seems like there is some potential
for a successful partnership.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403570)

~~~
landon32
Project Vesta is super exciting! We've seen them on HN a couple times, they're
still pretty early but it'd be cool to figure out how we could work together.

Thanks for mentioning them again

------
smaddox
> Most in this space are nonprofits but we are a business. We take a 20% fee
> on each subscription. This allows us to hire talented engineers, invest in
> marketing, and raise capital.

Non-profits can do all of those things, too... Why not do them as a non-
profit?

~~~
jnbiche
> Non-profits can do all of those things, too... Why not do them as a non-
> profit?

We've already got nonprofits doing this stuff. Given the gravity of the
situation, shouldn't we encourage a range of different approaches?

------
godelski
I'd love to see a further breakdown in options.

Like as someone who mostly bikes but does use a car a during the summer months
there's a clear scale. I'm also a meat eater but have very little red meat.
This would half the food emissions of an average American. Some sort of scale
would make me feel like I'm getting a more accurate answer to nuanced
questions (ones that I think a lot of people concern themselves with).

I was also suspicious when I put in vegetarian, car, and 2 flights a year <
3hrs resulted in having 11% lower than most Americans and then switching to
electric car gave me another 10%. IIRC that's making some big assumptions (not
considering electricity costs, lifetime emissions, state electric emissions).

I also find the "if everyone" part misleading (though I get why it's there, to
show privilege), but I think it is also effective to promote competition
within a country. I can be the best American but have a hard time beating
someone from the third world. Maybe have both?

Also, if you're going to allow fake emails why don't you let people calculate
first? Or maybe email required for a more nuanced position, if you're trying
to harvest them (since that probably gives you a better set of people that
you're looking for).

~~~
mtranzambetti
Have you tried editing your footprint further in the accordion below the first
six questions? There are options there to edit your diet, transportation,
electricity etc. at a much more granular level (i.e. I eat meat twice a week).
The first six questions have the greatest deltas between you and your
country's avg, which is why they're first, but I see how the setup makes it
confusing that you can go more in depth underneath. Let me know if you were
able to get that to work!

> switching to electric car gave me another 10%. IIRC that's making some big
> assumptions (not considering electricity costs, lifetime emissions, state
> electric emissions).

Are you talking about not considering electricity costs for manufacturing an
electric vehicle or more generally for your personal footprint?

Might be helpful to note that our previous calculator set up was much more
state specific (to postal code level) but we had to switch up the setup so it
could accommodate for international users. Our breakdown is still based on the
Berkeley Cool Climate model
([https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/publications](https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/publications))
but scaled by a country's per capita emissions (data from World Bank).
Unfortunately that means there's less granularity on region specific data for
the U.S. for now, but it should still be a pretty good estimate. That said —
there's still plenty of improvements that we can make to the calculator, so
thank you for the feedback.

Oh, I like the idea of competition on a country basis. Maybe showing your
percentile in your country could work. Let me know if you have any other ideas
here!

For the fake emails, from a product perspective it was more confusing for
people to enter in their emails after calculating their footprint than right
upfront. It might have been the way we had it set up or something but we can
come back to explore what can be improved there. For now if folks want to
calculate and leave without a way to get back to their footprint calculations
or offset their footprint, it's fine to leave a fake email. If users make it
to the create account page, they're able to confirm their email or change
their fake email there. :)

Ideally we're going to make the calculator completely open to use, but for now
it's still in our onboarding flow until we get around to spinning it out into
a separate tool.

------
jatsign
Why do I have to give you my email address before you'll let me figure out my
carbon footprint, and how much this will cost?

~~~
landon32
We use the email to save your progress, but if you'd like you can just use any
fake email

~~~
jatsign
But at the end you don't just show the footprint online, you only have the
option to get it emailed to me.

~~~
landon32
Your footprint should be available on that page—you should be able to see your
annual total, your breakdowns by category, and how that compares to global
averages. The "Email me my footprint" button just sends you a link so you can
save it. I could see how you may want to change the email you entered once you
get there though. We should add that!

Thanks for pointing that out

~~~
rococode
I just ran through the page _after_ seeing this comment and was also confused.
To me the phrasing and styling of the "Email me my footprint" button makes it
feel like the end of the process and that I need to click it. It didn't
immediately occur to me that I should keep scrolling down. In my case I
happened to scroll so that the "Step 3: Offset" was just out of view which
made it feel even more like an "OK you're done!" button, but I think even if I
saw there was more I would've wanted to click the button expecting that to be
the way to see my results. Maybe the two of us are outliers but it might be
worth it to explore some small design tweaks here. Love the concept!

~~~
landon32
This is a great point, you're right. Thank you for that feedback, we can edit
that soon.

------
gringoDan
Do you have any plans to expand to B2B? I'd imagine it might be a larger
impact, along with the positive psychological effect of it not being an
individual's money on the line.

~~~
landon32
Great idea! We're actually piloting that right now. I think it would be
promising especially since companies ask employees to travel and have
otherwise larger footprints from work.

~~~
cotap
Beware b2b with large corporates, especially those that have already professed
leadership and concern on climate change. Google, Disney, Microsoft, Apple,
UPS, and... Interface. They will wear you out. Maybe they'll have a soft spot
for your YCombinator gloss, but don't count on it. Most companies you would
pursue are already partnered up w/Natural Capital Partners, NativeEnergy,
Carbonfund, etc. It's very rare for them to switch. That gold rush happened
long ago. There are of course exceptions and other pockets of opportunity.
Don't think you're different, special, better... that "it's different this
time" or that hey offsetting is a neat space where buyers can granularly
allocate their buys across many different providers. Theoretically true,
doesn't happen. Save your energy for companies with newly-announced neutrality
commitments. Even then, in our experience, those dialogues move slowly (2+
years), usually involve RFI's and RFP's, and then you're up against 20+
incumbents who have been doing this for over a decade.

~~~
mtranzambetti
Hi! Thanks for putting in the time to respond to so many of the comments on
this thread! You've all been in this space for so long and it's really
valuable to hear your perspective.

>Beware b2b with large corporates

Just a note on b2b, we aren't going after large companies. Right now we are
just responding to inbound interest from users who want to offer Wren as a
benefit to their employees. We don't do offsets in scopes 1 through 3 because
we're focused on individuals, and as you said there are 20+ incumbents who
have been doing this for over a decade, and much better than we can right now.

>Don't think you're different, special, better... that "it's different this
time"

I don't think we're under the illusion that we are special. We are only trying
to build a good product to get individuals engaged who haven't been reached
before. We are also not trying to put down any organizations that are already
offering offsets to individuals by building Wren. I don't think we're going to
get anywhere by competing internally when the vast majority of the world
doesn't know what can be done on an individual basis to take action, whether
that's lifestyle changes, political action, activism, offsets, etc. We are
here to contribute, not take away from or hurt the space. Whether it's
changing our organization structure, margin, projects we're working with,
whatever it is, I'd love to hear from you about what you think we should be
doing better. Please email me at mimi@projectwren.com if you'd like to
continue the conversation!

------
ryanmercer
Here is part of what I told Paul Graham after he tweeted you last week:

"How about instead of directing people to pay a middle man to take 20% off the
top to pay others to plant trees" which, correct me if I'm wrong, is exactly
what you are doing, while some of may be going to non-tree planting activities
- the most effective thing you can do with that money right now, unless you
are sitting on a miraculous new technology, is to pay people to actively plant
new trees and/or protect existing forest.

Per your website for those that haven't looked

>Wren takes 20% of each subscription and puts it toward growing the company.

Also like I told Paul, and Sam Altman,

"Planting trees isn't even a bandaid, it's like cutting your arm off and then
gently blowing in the gaping wound. To offset our current CO2 production you
need to add more than 31 million square miles, nearly 16% of the earth's land,
of new forest assuming a healthy density of 40-60 trees per acre."

That figure above is actually really conservative. Add to that the fact we're
losing forest at an estimated 28,125 square miles annually... do you realize
how many customers you'll have to get to even combat 28,125 square miles
annually? The best trees can manage about 48lbs of CO2 per year, and healthy
forest is 40-60 trees per acre, that means you're going to need to plant a
billion plus trees a year to even hope to combat current forest loss, a
BILLION trees... and I'm not talking twigs, I'm talking 10ft+ trees, in
healthy soil, with healthy fungal networks (the fungi that work in symbiosis
with trees aid considerably in the carbon sequestration and overall tree
health).

Seriously, do the math yourselves and then try and justify your business
model. Not to me, but to each other.

I think you need to cease operations immediately, I think you need to do a lot
more math, and then I think you need to come back with a strategy to help
people personally minimize their carbon impact. You're selling people a
fantasy, you're selling them nothing more than an uniformed "I'm helping save
the world" feeling because they joined a subscription service while you take
20% off the top to hire more employees.

I honestly have no idea whatsoever why YC selected your company and chose to
fund it, other than the 20% off the top of every subscription and perhaps
banking on the fact that people will feel guilty about climate change and
happily fork over money on a subscription model.

~~~
landon32
You're right, we have to be critical of what we're doing because this is such
an important challenge for humanity. This is why we're doing it:

People who sign up for Wren usually were not previously considering offsetting
their carbon footprint. In 1 month ~200 people have offset their footprint
through Wren. We anticipate this number to grow exponentially, and think
several million people offsetting their carbon footprint is a reasonable goal
for the short term. This is nontrivial—it will be as impactful as the U.S.
agreeing to go on track for the paris climate accord again. This would not
happen if we did not take a fee.

Planting trees is one of many solutions we're focused on. Project Drawdown has
99 more: [https://www.drawdown.org/](https://www.drawdown.org/) and if we were
able to enact all of them we'd be carbon neutral as a planet.

We will certainly be doing more math and developing a better strategy. However
we think that by launching Wren we have already learned more than months spent
strategizing could have taught us—this is at its core a consumer behavior
problem so we have to spend our time understanding people.

Keep us posted on more ideas and feedback for maximizing our impact

~~~
ryanmercer
> Project Drawdown has 99 more:
> [https://www.drawdown.org/](https://www.drawdown.org/)

You keep mentioning Project Drawdown in this thread.

Why should people pay you 20% instead of just donating to Project Drawdown.

Will you continue to take 20% when you reach those 'several million people'
subscribing? I mean, at 5$ a month each that's 'several million' dollars a
month for what, web hosting and 3 salaries?

I see on LinkedIn you're listed as a software company and keep mentioning
engineers. What engineers do you need? What exactly are you doing other than
acting as a middle-man for funds by hosting a simple calculator and merchant
portal?

As my downvotes would suggest, I'm apparently coming across as quite harsh but
I've yet to see anything remotely actionable other than "see the ideas so and
so has" "engineers" "millions".

I'm not a venture capitalist, I have no use for projections and buzzwords. I'm
not even a CS type so I don't immediately think "we need engineers!" for every
problem that comes along in some subconscious way of justifying my
career/creating job security.

"we prefer projects with strong social impact" what does this even mean.
Global warming isn't something that's going to be solved by 'social impact'.
China is building HUNDREDS of coal power plants right now and adding millions
of new drivers to the road annually (in fact, China has more licensed drivers
now than the United States does citizens). The methane produced by 1.3-1.5
billion cattle worldwide are responsible for roughly 2 gigatons
CO2-equivalent.

Drawdown, as you keep linking, most of their proposed ideas/areas of interest
are laughable

\- Electric bikes (going to largely be powered by, fossil fuels)

\- Electric cars (going to largely be powered by, fossil fuels, and will
remain cost prohibitive for 95% of the world's population, if not more)

\- Mass transit takes years or decades to roll out, when funding can even be
secured and all zoning challenges can be met

\- Alternative cement, this will be great if someone can make a breakthrough
but there has been next to zero progress made on anything that is remotely
feasible or even scalable

\- Bioplastic, while this takes petrochemicals out of the equation it is still
pretty energy demanding and is still not good for the environment,
biodegradable does not inherently mean safe.

\- Recycled paper, or how about doing away with paper. Instead of making
recycled paper (which requires obscene amounts of toxic chemicals) why not get
legislation passed to outlaw mass mailing, do you know how much mail I throw
away each week that is advertisements and solicitations that I never even look
at?

\- Industrial recycling, aside from aluminium and CLEANED glass recycling is
mostly a farce. Don't believe me, do your homework, planet money even had an
episode on this recently. Plastic is largely just taken to landfills, even if
sent to recycling, because unless it is cleaned it is considered contaminated
and China will no longer buy it to recycle it because of a loss of cheap labor
and the pollution recycling it causes.

\- Autonomous vehicles, mutli-national companies are having trouble with this
and even if they do pass it you likely have years of legal hurdles to get them
legal and a decade or more to get people to even begin to accept and adopt
them in numbers sufficient enough to make them more efficient than human
driving as you'll have to remove the bulk of human drivers from the road.

\- Building with wood is already happening, but it adds considerable cost and
still has considerable height limits which still require more land to be
turned from green spaces to tarmac and building. Not to mention this wood
isn't always sustainably farmed.

\- Direct air capture, this is almost certainly never going to happen barring
multiple miraculous inventions. The closest person to doing this is Dr. Klaus
Lackner and even his research has it not being viable, even if you capture in
a method like his (a polymer that you then 'wash' it you still have to
sequester it somehow).

\- Hyperloop, pure fantasy. Never going to happen for travelling large
distances. Travelling large distances is one of the problems anyway.
Commercial aviation fuel usage has gone up 33% in 9 years.

\- Refrigerant management, this will help with new appliances but the billion
plus refrigeration/freezer units out there already...

\- Industrial hemp, will just require more land to be planted as farmland
won't be sacrificed it and cotton will be farmed until at least the current
generation of farmers dies, farmers don't like change.

\- Living buildings, they look great in concept art but aren't practical and
won't have any meaningful impact. They'll likely take decades just to offset
the CO2 emissions from manufacturing the concrete that went into the
building's foundations.

\- Ocean farming and marine permaculture, coastal waters absolutely need kelp
and seaweed 'forests' re-established. There are some women in/around the Bay
Area working on this - Tessa Emmer, Catherine O'Hare, and Avery Resor and what
they are doing needs to be done up and down every last square mile of water
with proper depth in the entire world.

Smart grids, if you mean in the United States good luck. This isn't something
you are going to be able to have any influence on whatsoever. You'll have to
get every single power company in the United States and Canada to voluntarily
replace perfectly functioning, very expensive, equipment over a decade or more
and even if you did they'll pass the cost on tot eh customer.

\- Solid-state wave energy, at any scale this is likely to have any number of
unforeseen consequences for marine life (probably sound-induced stress for
starters) and be quite costly due to the corrosive nature of oceans.

~~~
abraae
There's a lot to be negative about wrt our climate crisis for sure.

However overwhelmingly negative messages I believe can contribute to inaction
through people moving straight from the denial phase to the "what's the point,
we're all doomed" phase.

Just to pick the first of your points to rebut:

> Electric bikes (going to largely be powered by, fossil fuels)

1) in my country the grid uses 70+ renewable energy (mainly hydro), so EVs are
extremely promising.

2) progress made on EVs will pay off in the future, when/if the grid becomes
greener. How crap would it be to make big success at one end of the equation,
e.g widespread deployment of nuclear to green the grid, and then find that all
the vehicles had no way to use that clean power?

Of course it makes sense to develop technologies like electric bike, EVs
generally.

Yet your comment is written as if it makes no sense. It conveys a strong sense
of doom and pointlessness.

If your intention is just to spread doom, then perhaps keep it to yourself.

If it's to shock people into action then there are better ways to communicate.

~~~
ryanmercer
>1) in my country the grid uses 70+ renewable energy (mainly hydro), so EVs
are extremely promising.

Sadly that's not the case for most of the world. Petroleum, natural gas, and
coal—combined accounted for about 77.6% of the U.S. primary energy production
in 2017. Fossil fuel energy consumption in China was reported at 87.48% in
2014.

> progress made on EVs will pay off in the future, when/if the grid becomes
> greener.

Only if new battery technologies are created that can be manufactured quicker,
in a greater capacity, than lithium batteries are now.

>There’s little risk of lithium supplies running low in any absolute sense;
the next decade will probably see less than one percent of the world’s lithium
reserves depleted. The real danger is that lithium won’t be recovered and made
available quickly enough to meet the rising demand.

>There are two sources of lithium: brine and mineral deposits. Brine is
recovered through a process known as brine mining in which dissolved lithium
(and other useful elements) are extracted through a long, energy-intensive,
and costly process. Recovering lithium from mines is more straightforward, but
most of the world’s lithium is in brine pools in South America. About half of
the 35,000 metric tons produced in 2016 came from brine operations in Chile
and Argentina.

[https://blog.energybrainpool.com/en/is-there-enough-
lithium-...](https://blog.energybrainpool.com/en/is-there-enough-lithium-to-
feed-the-need-for-batteries/)

From the same article we also have to factor in how rapidly lithium prices are
increasing:

>Anxiety about lithium’s availability has caused its price to spike. In 2010,
lithium sold for $5,180 per metric ton. By 2012, the cost was over $6,000 per
metric ton, and by the end of 2017, a metric ton was going for about $14,000 –
a 270 percent increase over 2010 levels.

So what happens when you start churning out EVs 10x faster than Tesla is, 100x
faster?

And how much more fossil fuels will need to be burnt in power plants (it's
worth noting that roughly 6% of power generated at a power plant is lost in
transmission before it arrives, then more will be lost changing voltage at a
charging location, then more as it feeds into the battery) instead of as
gasoline as more and more cars come online? And all of the infrastructure that
will have to be created to support them? 17% of Americans live in an apartment
or a condo, they can't just pay to install a plug in their garage as in most
cases they do not have a garage or even a dedicated parking spot and
businesses, you're going to have to convince businesses to spend large sums of
money to install charging infrastructure in their parking lots for tens or
hundreds of parking spots, and likely to support that new lines will have to
be run to the area, widespread adoption of electric vehicles in a country like
the United States suddenly means tens of billions of dollars in just power
lines and substations, wiring and charging stations.And adding a bunch of EVs
will mean you'll need to add a bunch of grid storage or bring more fossil fuel
plants online to meet the demand of all of the cars getting plugged in at
8-9am in each time zone as people arrive at work... renewable energy doesn't
work well for spooling up to meet demand.

Plus with widespread EV adoption in a given country you have to basically
retool every firehouse in that country to also be able to handle EV accidents,
pierce a cell on an EV and you have a fire situation that can last DAYS as
cells rupture one by one in a worst-case scenario (like when Richard Hammon
crashed that Rimac Concept One supercar).

>Yet your comment is written as if it makes no sense. It conveys a strong
sense of doom and pointlessness.

No my comment points out that the organization Wren keeps listing, has a bunch
of whimsical fantasy ideas that are not remotely viable and I don't see why I
should give Wren my hard-earned money to take 20% for themselves before they
hand 80% over to organizations, or individuals, that are chasing fantasy
technologies that won't be viable for decades, if ever.

------
supercall
Why did you decide to pursue this strategy to help fight the climate crisis?
As opposed to other strategies such as carbon removal technologies or
supporting / electing public officials that understand the climate crisis?

~~~
landon32
2 big reasons: 1) There are a lot of solutions to climate change that we could
enact today if they had funding. Project Drawdown
([https://www.drawdown.org/](https://www.drawdown.org/)) may be of interest—it
lists all the solutions to climate change we can enact today. It's quite
surprising—we don't need CRT, we just need action today. With electing
officials, we think that would be the best solution but it's relatively high
risk—if we fail to do it, climate change gets worse. (that said electing
officials is still super important, more on why we didn't choose that route in
(2))

2) We thought this is something we'd be good at relative to our other options.

It would be really cool to work on CRT or clean energy breakthroughs, but we
have no science background and it would be years before we ramped up to start
making an impact on those technologies.

For policy, we think we can be good active members of our communities and vote
etc, but we could not see ourselves spending all of our time lobbying or
campaigning or otherwise pulling levers in the political space.

But what we do love doing is building products. We are content doing this all
day, and hope that will allow us to make more and more useful products to
reverse climate change.

------
zackproser
Great idea. I've signed up and I think your execution is pretty slick.

I'm still noodling on a somewhat similar project with treespree.io but had
some of the same concerns raised in your thread that I still need to think
through.

I think one of the core value adds of these approaches is that they convert
people who are inactive out of fear or uncertainty into people who are at
least starting to do something and possibly discuss the issues with people
they are close to.

Still not sure how to best ensure ongoing engagement for the long haul.

All the best to you guys though - really want to see your project succeed.

------
tom_mellior
Some notes on the calculator:

\- Asking only for the size of my home but nothing else seems bogus. Surely
apartments in a densely populated city have different footprints than single-
family homes in suburbia or the countryside? Part of my housing's footprint
will be modeled by transport considerations and heating costs, but apparently
not all, otherwise you wouldn't ask.

\- District heating
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating))
is a big thing where I live, and it's impossible to quantify for individuals
what their footprint is when they have that instead of gas.

\- My final result came back as 10% less than my country's average (yay) but I
see no way to figure out why. Probably because I don't drive, but it would be
cool to see a more detailed breakdown of all the data I entered, how they
factor into the calculation, and how they relate to my country's (and the
worldwide) average.

Nice job and certainly not trivial to set up!

Edit: Oh, and I'd like a less clumsy way to see in the footprint overview (the
link mailed to me) how much it would cost to offset my footprint, and what
projects are available. I had to re-enter all the data! It would be _awesome_
if I had a link that I could mail to friends and family saying "look, here is
my impact, and this is how unexpectedly cheap it is to fix it".

~~~
mtranzambetti
Mimi from Wren here:

1\. You can change info about your transportation habits + electricity usage
in the footprint breakdown below the first six questions. Those top level
questions have the largest impact on the delta between your country's avg and
your footprint, but you can go more in depth below to account for diff between
if you live in an urban, suburb, or rural area.

Does that answer your q? I'm not sure if you are asking for more specificity
on your footprint overall or just the housing section.

2\. Good point. We're improving the electricity section of our calculator to
account for renewables and other specific energy setups. Will keep you posted
when that's up.

3\. (Yay indeed!) All of the initial values pre-populated in the accordion
below the first six questions are actually averages from your country. It
might not be clear right now since the values appear somewhat random and also
disappear as soon as you enter in your own information, but we can have those
values persist and show specific deltas between you and your country / world
for each question if that's helpful.

4\. We're setting up those links so it's easier to get back to your
information in the calculator! Also, we have the cost to offset your footprint
appear a page later once you choose your project. Wasn't sure if you hadn't
made it to that step or just want that information in the footprint overview
link as well.

Hope that's helpful, thanks for the feedback.

~~~
tom_mellior
Thanks. For question 1, I guess the question has two parts: why you ask for
the size of my home, i.e., how does it factor into the calculation; and why
the density of the area it is in does not seem to factor directly into the
calculation.

As for 3 and 4, yes, the more information I can get in the overview the
better. And always with a link to the service you are actually providing for
money :-)

------
MuffinFlavored
I'm more interested in setting up consumer/hobbyist level carbon capture
processes (if thermodynamically possible).

Rough outline from Rod Fitzsimmons:

\- capture of CO2 from the atmosphere using a variety of techniques, usually
adsorbtion
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage)).
This takes quite a bit of energy.

\- Conversion of the dissolved CO2 into alcohols. Reaction is 2CO2 + 9H2O +
12e- → C2H5OH + 12OH- so it's energy-uphill and needs an energy input. Maybe
solar cells or a wind turbine. Requires a catalyst, often a variety of copper
matrix. Catalysts are the major subject of research. To figure out whether you
could do this in your garage you'd probably need to go to the literature.

\- Distillation of the alcohols - usually done with heat, requires 800-900 deg
C. Possible but hard and energy intensive. This is where Prometheus sits, they
have a nanoscale membrane that does room-temperature separation of the
alcohols using electricity input (more energy in!)

\- Conversion of the alcohols into gasoline, diesel, kerosene etc. This is a
pretty well-known process that uses a catalyst called ZSM-5 plus heat (mo' mo'
energy!). I haven't looked into the chemistry or the availability of the
catalyst.

This seems like a better startup idea than a project funding aggregator.

~~~
nostromo
\- plant a tree

It solar powered and even self-replicating!

~~~
ars
Let ivy grow on your walls. The kind with glue pads will not harm walls, and
the leaves provide shade in the summer and fall off in the winter.

~~~
mtranzambetti
Ivy walls are very beautiful. Might be hard to do at scale + also apparently
difficult to maintain but I wouldn't know

~~~
ars
Why hard at scale?

The only maintenance I've found you needed to do is clear the windows - do it
at least monthly during the growing season. And also don't let it grow on to
gutters.

Basically push the ivy off of the windows so it hangs down. Hanging down like
that seems to send the plant a signal to stop growing in the area. (If you cut
it it seems to grow even faster there.)

If the plant dies, which does happen, you need to wait a while for the glue
pads to degrade before removing the old plant from the walls.

It's not really any harder than dealing with gardening in general.

------
danielecook
Not sure how you will provide updates but I think satellite imagery over time
would be really neat for reforested areas.

~~~
mtranzambetti
Satellite imagery is definitely very powerful, and we're including it in
updates for the rainforest protection projects. We'll look into providing that
when we have reforestation projects :)

Here's a tweet from a user with a satellite image update from the Tech-enabled
rainforest protection project we're working with:
[https://twitter.com/crabbyafrica/status/1144332819969105920](https://twitter.com/crabbyafrica/status/1144332819969105920)

------
greenbonds
Congrats on the launch! Curious about your thoughts on the carbon impact of
carbon offsets vs investing in green bonds that fund energy efficiency
projects (e.g. [https://copower.me/en/](https://copower.me/en/)) vs investing
in public companies that fund sustainable development (e.g.
[https://www.hannonarmstrong.com/](https://www.hannonarmstrong.com/)) vs
investing in green energy companies directly (e.g. vivint solar or first
solar).

I recognize that the direct dollar-to-CO2 carbon impact might be lower, but
green investments might enable higher retail & institutional spend (since it's
an investment instead of a donation) and therefore might have more impact on
reducing CO2.

~~~
landon32
This sort of investment is very cool! I hope to see it becoming more common.

We're focusing on direct offsets because we think long term we'll need a great
market for carbon offsets and reduction. We already have too much CO2 in the
atmosphere, so everything we can do to literally pull it out is necessary.
Clean energy is great but I think we'll need something like carbon
offsets/reduction in addition to it.

------
hairytrog
This is pretty unfair. People who put money into these projects should be able
to make money from them as well. Why should climate-conscious people have to
donate money to offset the carbon footprint while investors get to earn?

~~~
landon32
Treating this more as investing is very promising and maybe something we'd
consider. Currently most of these solutions do not generate a profit that
could be an ROI for investors on Wren or a similar platform, but some projects
will have an ROI and it would be interesting if we (or someone else) could
offer an easy way for anyone to invest in profitable ideas that are good for
the climate.

------
angerbot
Super neat! One note that I found odd: km/L is a weird way to talk about fuel
efficiency for metric. Everywhere that I've seen typically uses L/100km rather
than just doing a MPG equivalent conversion.

~~~
mtranzambetti
Oh great to know. We recently added in support for metric conversion and
weren't familiar with the standard for mpg to metric. We'll change that!

~~~
StavrosK
Yes, that was very confusing for me because nobody here uses km/L. It's always
L/100km.

------
robin_reala
How do you work to avoid monoculture ecosystems when planting forests as
carbon capture? Also, how do you ensure that the wood isn’t subsequently
harvested and burnt, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere again.

~~~
landon32
Great questions.

Monoculture ecosystems are fairly easy to avoid, you just have to plant
different types of trees that will thrive. This is easy for the Community Tree
Planting project on our site because the farmers are the ones planting the
trees and they usually want to incorporate agroforestry techniques as part of
their farm, so it's a fairly diverse ecosystem already—they aren't just going
out and planting 100s of pine trees.

There's a few strategies to ensure wood isn't harvested. The first one is by
making the trees valuable in the ground to farmers—focusing on fruit and nut
trees that the farmers benefit from day to day.

Next reason is simple: they're paid to keep them in the ground.

The next is that there's social pressure. These farmers plant trees with a
group of other farmers, and if anyone cuts down their trees the whole group
loses some of the benefits.

It's a promising model which is why we like this partner.

------
mlguy456
I don't believe in "offsetting personal footprint". This idea appeals to
personal guilt, while aims at filling the pockets of the founders. The
solution should be going after companies who make products that break by
design after certain time of use, thus forcing the customers to buy new items.
If done right, this will be painful for both companies (many will have to
close the shop) and for the people who are used to cheap shiny stuff, but the
result will be a cleaner planet and healthier business model.

~~~
cotap
Not guilt. Not sin. Your logic is specious parroted re-hash from George
Monbiot's failed thought leadership from the mid-2000's. Carbon dioxide is
pollution and waste just like household garbage, recycling, and compost. When
you offset you're cleaning up after yourself.

As with more tangible-seeming waste, it's always better to avoid and reduce
before paying another party to deal with it. Yet CO2 is demonized because
global warming is a collective externality. Because it's invisible doesn't
make it intangible. Because the reductions can be counteracted by an entity
that's in another location doesn't make a difference, either!

------
plondon514
Did you consider the ability for one to offset their carbon footprint on their
own? I know there is probably less money involved, but it would be cool if I
could determine my footprint and then be given tasks to try to offset it on my
own.

EDIT: cool project btw :)

~~~
landon32
Oh that's a great point. You can absolutely use our carbon calculator and then
find another project to support. We want to make a really good carbon
calculator that's useful to everyone, not just Wren subscribers. Let us know
if you have ideas or feedback there.

~~~
plondon514
Could you provide an API for the carbon calculator? Or is that relatively easy
to build?

~~~
mtranzambetti
Here's the info on how we built it — Landon posted about this a few hours ago:

> We use data + research from Berkeley's cool climate lab
> ([https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/publications](https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/publications))
> The main model is maintained by them, and is based on linear regression from
> a bunch of lifestyle variables that you input into the calculator. Our
> version is slightly different because we base it on country instead of zip
> code, so we scale most input variables by the country's per capita emissions
> to get a good estimate.

Some of the data might be a little tricker to find but most of it is based off
of Cool Climate's model + World Bank per capita emissions data. Let us know if
we can help with anything here!

------
whoisjuan
Does this compete with Pachama? I don't understand this space well so I'm not
entirely sure, but if I remember well Pachama is also trying to sell, carbon
offsets by quantifying forest projects.

~~~
landon32
We love Pachama! They have been helpful in shaping our understanding of the
space and some of the big challenges with forest carbon projects. They are not
a competitor though, they mostly work with bigger companies where as we focus
on individuals.

------
hariis
Have you consulted any experts in this area to see if offsetting carbon
footprint is an effective way? Perhaps that will provide more credibility to
potential customers.

~~~
mtranzambetti
Yes, we've spoken to many (i.e. UC Berkeley's Cool Climate, Nori, and Pachama)
who have deepened our understanding of the space and inspired us to keep
building. As it turns out, the best solution to climate change is divesting
from fossil fuels entirely, but we will need a whole host of solutions that
includes carbon sequestration and carbon removal — projects and technologies
that individuals can fund. If you have anyone you think we should talk to,
please send them our way!

------
teabee89
Can you share the methodology on how you calculate a carbon footprint/offset?

~~~
landon32
For carbon offsets, it is pretty different depending on the type of project.
We do not invent these methodologies, we use methodologies from groups like
Verra Carbon Standard ([https://verra.org/project/vcs-
program/methodologies/methodol...](https://verra.org/project/vcs-
program/methodologies/methodology-catalog/)).
[https://projectwren.com/methodologies](https://projectwren.com/methodologies)
has more information about how we specifically choose projects.

It can be pretty down in the weeds to calculate the emissions from these
projects and since it varies by type I can't summarize it all here. However if
you have more specific questions I'd be happy to answer.

Re: carbon footprints, it's a little simpler. We use data + research from
Berkeley's cool climate lab
([https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/publications](https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/publications))
The main model is maintained by them, and is based on linear regression from a
bunch of lifestyle variables that you input into the calculator. Our version
is slightly different because we base it on country instead of zip code, so we
scale most input variables by the country's per capita emissions to get a good
estimate.

------
maerF0x0
see also:
[http://www.carbonzero.ca/offset/?offset_tonnes=6.23423881733...](http://www.carbonzero.ca/offset/?offset_tonnes=6.2342388173333)

------
beoh
Please add more payment methods, credit cards are kinda rare where I live.

~~~
mtranzambetti
Mimi, Wren co-founder here. What payment methods are most convenient / common
for you?

~~~
beoh
Debit/IBAN or PayPal would work :)

~~~
mtranzambetti
Oh perfect. We're using Stripe and accept Debit Cards currently. The credit
card wording we're using is pretty confusing, we'll change that!

~~~
beoh
I think that's a misunderstanding, sorry. I was talking about SEPA debit, via
an IBAN. The checkout form doesn't appear to accept those atm.

~~~
mtranzambetti
Oh got it. Yes, we'll add in an ability to checkout with debit via an IBAN /
Paypal soon. Will keep you posted!

------
winslett
Shameless plug: check out Cloverly.com for an API for Carbon Offsets.

~~~
mtranzambetti
Nice plug! Reminds me of this ask from Tobi Lütke at Shopify but with wind +
solar credits:
[https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1148376688423854080](https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1148376688423854080)

------
erica_eliot
Hi! Jet-Set Offset here (www.jetsetoffset.com). This is an interesting
approach for offsetting. We’re a startup with a similar focus on air travel --
which is one of the largest contributors of carbon emissions in the US and
around the world, with emissions rates that have been increasing 4% each year
as more and more of us are flying. We’ve found that lack of awareness around
this issue is almost as great as the difficulty of navigating the traditional
carbon marketplace to “offset” your flight emissions. While flying less is the
best thing each of us can do as individuals, it's not always possible or
realistic.

Jet-Set Offset was founded with the belief that we can make better choices and
do good when we fly. Jet-Set Offset is a platform that allows eco-conscious
travelers to do something about the environmental impact of their air travel
by automatically donating one-cent per mile to their choice of non-profit
environmental organization - every time they fly. Rather than operate as
another carbon market, we've developed a donation-based alternative. Our model
allows members to give based on the exact air mileage of their flight (not an
estimated subscription model), and give to nonprofits in a meaningful way
without taking a 20% cut.

We share similar aims to Wren but our approach is different. Here’s how: \- We
provide a donation-based alternative to the traditional "purchase and sale"
carbon offset market. Some of our nonprofit partners operate certified carbon
offset projects, but Jet-Set Offset is not just another carbon marketplace. \-
Jet-Set Offset operates as a business, but every donation made through the
platform is 100% tax-deductible, as it’s made directly to the organization of
the flyer’s choice. The organizations pay Jet-Set Offset a 3% fee of every
donation made for use of the platform, in addition to credit card processing
fees -- which means that the non-profit organizations are receiving 94% of
each donation made. \- The work of many of our nonprofit partners moves beyond
the direct mitigation of carbon emissions by also focusing on climate
adaptation, resilience, energy transformation, and policy change. \- We’ve
made choice a huge part of our model. Flyers can choose to give where they
live and support a local organization with an environmental mission that
resonates with them.

As public consciousness of this issue grows, we think that air travelers will
seek viable options and alternatives to the traditional 1:1 carbon offset
markets -- which can be challenging to navigate and bring up separate issues
of resilience, additionality, permanence, and leakage (see Andy Newman’s
recent article in the NYT, “If Seeing the World Helps Ruin It…”). While
certifying organizations go to great lengths to verify carbon offset projects,
verification has limits.

To all the readers, check us out! We’re interested in feedback to our approach
and connection to more nonprofit partners doing amazing work that we can
support. Is that an organization you’d want to give to when you fly?
(Currently, any US-based 501c3 organization can request to become a Jet-Set
Offset partner, provided that part of their mission is working to combat
climate change and that they can provide measurable results of how donations
made via the platform will be used.)

