
Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment - mhoad
https://stripe.com/au/blog/negative-emissions-commitment
======
simonebrunozzi
It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and
commitment) coming from a single company.

I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to
being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many
things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from
my point of view.

Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys.

As a side note: I personally think that the way we look at environment and
impact is plainly wrong. E.g. it is much more effective to plant trees (called
"afforestation") rather than sequester CO2. Here's some old but decent sources
[0], [1]. Can't find a proper source, but afforestation, when done together
with habitat restoration, can be even cheaper than these numbers, when done in
certain areas of Africa, South America and Central Asia.

If Stripe wants to go the proverbial extra mile, it should consider
"educating" people on the subject AND take consequent action, as opposed to
"just" taking action following conventional wisdom.

[0]:
[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40562.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40562.pdf)

[1]:
[https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr888.pdf](https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr888.pdf)
(afforestation "price" starting at ~$50/ton)

~~~
surfmike
Don’t you then need to worry about enforcement mechanisms to keep those trees
from getting cut down? If they’re all harvested after say n decades, there’s
no net effect on climate.

~~~
tomjakubowski
How does it follow that there's no net effect on climate (or amount of
atmospheric carbon) if the tree is cut down? I can only see that if the timber
is burned for fuel. If someone instead carved the timber up into N
skateboards, modulo waste, the carbon would stay with the skateboards.

~~~
kingbirdy
Skateboards don't stay skateboards forever. Eventually they'll be thrown out,
where they'll degrade & eventually decompose, re-releasing the stored CO2.

~~~
ralusek
Mostly into the ground, no? Isn't that how petroleum was formed in the first
place?

~~~
kingbirdy
It depends entirely on where the skateboards and other wood-derived waste ends
up. If it's not properly disposed of (e.g. litter), then it will release
most/all of it into the atmosphere. If it's incinerated, it's all released. If
it's in a landfill, it depends on whether and how effectively the landfill is
sealed.

------
abalone
Just to summarize (warm up those downvotes...):

* “almost certainly more” than 84% of stripe’s emissions will not be sequestered because it’s “financially infeasible”

* no mention of stripe’s actual carbon footprint

* talk of startups and trillion dollar industry “by the end of the century” but no mention of government intervention / green new deal to turn the tide in the next decade before it’s too late

Verdict: free market ideologues are not ever going to be leaders on climate.
We need massive mobilization at the federal level to hit the necessary
emissions reductions within the next 12 years if we are to avoid a
catastrophic rise in temperature.

~~~
dgellow
> We need massive mobilization at the federal level to hit the necessary
> emissions reductions within the next 12 years if we are to avoid a
> catastrophic rise in temperature.

That doesn’t really make sense IMHO, global warming isn’t a US problem, it’s a
worldwide issue. Let’s say the US becomes a benevolent dictatorship with the
mission to reduce CO2 emissions by any mean necessary (and is somehow
successful), you still have the global problem. And then what, do you go to
war against other countries?

~~~
mononcqc
You do your part, other countries try to do the same, and various means and
strategies are implemented and shared globally.

This “but we can’t fix it all alone, it’s a global issue” thinking mode has to
go. All contributions are important in reducing the speed of warming, whether
your neighbour participates or not.

Interestingly, the longer you wait, the more you can expect people with more
extreme agendas to pop up around the globe because they will see the point in
coercion to save the world. Early investment at a massive scale is worth it.

~~~
dgellow
> This “but we can’t fix it all alone, it’s a global issue” thinking mode has
> to go.

Ok, why? It is a global issue, that’s not something we can ignore. You can
change your way of thinking if you want, but I don’t see why you would ignore
that point. I find it disingenuous to say “if the US government doesn’t do X
in 12 years then we are doomed”, because it’s not true. Of course I’m not
saying that nothing should be done, and I never said it cannot be fixed (or
dealt with), that’s just you putting words in my mouth. But the US government
has a terrible history at dealing with other countries, and creating a giant
mess all around. Just imagine Trump deciding to focus on climate issues, I
cannot see how that wouldn’t result in a complete disaster with international
conflicts.

I think that we should keep the framing on the global aspect, and think about
it as a common goal.

I don’t disagree with the rest of your comment, I completely support any
effort at a local level.

------
titojankowski
For people really into carbon removal --- Check out AirMiners, the largest
community of entrepreneurs, researchers, and funders exploring opportunities
in negative emissions and carbon removal. Folks from every major carbon
removal startups like Climeworks, Global Thermostat, etc.

Join 320+ of us on Slack!

Apply here to join:
[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12L8drO9a6OZf3-I9578PieBI0fw...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12L8drO9a6OZf3-I9578PieBI0fwe-
RuPBpqWXsvyYK4/edit)

There's also a public meetup group in the Bay Area:
[https://meetup.com/CarbonRemoval/](https://meetup.com/CarbonRemoval/)

~~~
enraged_camel
Let's say I'm a regular web developer and know nothing about climate science,
carbon removal, or any related science or technologies, but might be
interested in donating my time and and skills.

Do you have any recommendations?

~~~
Rapzid
This is probably a really sensitive topic but.. Donating your time to help get
politicians elected who are serious about doing what's necessary may be the
best thing you can do.

~~~
titojankowski
Politicians are powerless without good technology options.

Today, the technology options are not good. but good options are within sight.
As a technologist, let's go make better tech.

Climate change is a technology problem and a marketing problem.

YC's carbon site does a great job marketing for these crucial technologies:
[http://carbon.ycombinator.com/](http://carbon.ycombinator.com/)

~~~
adrianN
The technology options today are good enough. We can start building wind
turbines and solar panels _right now_. We can insulate homes _right now_. We
can replace oil and gas heating with heat pumps _right now_.

Storage only becomes a problem when a quite significant chunk of the
generation is intermittent. But even then, today's batteries are good enough
for overnight storage, and for longer term storage we can use power-to-gas
processes.

~~~
titojankowski
heck yeah let's do that! Solar tech has gotten so much cheaper and better, my
friend is replacing what used to be $30k of panels for $2k.

------
CAPTUREJosie
Shameless plug here but anyone interested in helping us prototype test an app
to track/gamify/offset daily carbon emissions? We are a start-up in Singapore
called CAPTURE :) all about helping people become aware of the impact their
daily actions can have on their carbon footprint, make it fun and add a little
competition, then for what you can't reduce - we will offer in-app offsetting
via CAPTURE forests, where you'll be able to track your individual trees and
watch your forests grow via a monthly drone update! Would be super grateful
for any feedback. Early stages but testers/those interested please sign-up at
www.thecapture.club

------
mikeg8
Bravo to Stripe's continued leadership and exemplification of what a modern
corporation can and _should_ be. The CCS area I've been most fascinated by
recently is listed as their first area of interest: natural carbon sinks via
land management practices.

I've been reading a little more about mob-stalked, heavily mobile grazing
techniques (rotating cows/buffalo/ruminants daily) which increases the grass
productivity per acre, thus capuring more carbon in the grass --> soil. If
anyone knows of any resources/studies comparing the carbon sequestration of
grasslands, which have incredible biomass cycles over several decades, vs
managed forests which do not see the same level of biomass turnover, I would
love to see them.

------
brunoTbear
I'm surprised by the size of the commit. If $1M is the floor for what a
Stripe-sized org is willing to spend, how expensive would a carbon tax
actually be? Are there good estimators for my impact as a consumer and how
much I need to commit to this?

Basically I want to know how much it costs to feel ok about my flights to go
skiing.

~~~
chrdlu
I've been posting about this a lot, but check out Project Wren!
([https://projectwren.com/](https://projectwren.com/))

It costs me $40 a month to offset my own carbon footprint, but I take a lot
more flights than the average person.

~~~
davedx
Great, didn't know about that. Subscribed on the spot and sharing it around,
thanks for posting.

~~~
chrdlu
We need lots more people like you! :)

------
itcrowd
This is an amazing pledge and very powerful statement.

However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions. The main counter
argument being that CCS technology enables the status quo of fossil fuel
burning to continue.

On the other hand, there are some heavy industries (steel production?) that do
not have any alternatives to coal burning in order to operate and CCS can
offset the carbon footprint in these industries. I would however not call this
"negative emissions" but rather "emission-free" or similar.

What is your opinion on CCS? Can people convince me in either direction?

~~~
tlb
There isn't some intrinsic moral sin to burning carbon. There are just
practical problems with having too much in the atmosphere. If you can remove
carbon, especially if you can also convert it back into fuel, that solves the
problem.

(Carbon isn't the only emission from burning coal -- it contains sulfur and
thorium too. But these can also be mitigated with some expense. And if you're
converting CO2 directly to fuel, there's no increase in pollution at all.)

~~~
maximente
no, this is too simplistic. extracting carbon from the ground is neither free
nor reversable so this analogy isn't appropriate here. even if one could turn
it back into whatever it's original form was (impossible to do without
additional energy due to thermodyamics/entropy), the site of extraction is way
worse for the wear.

~~~
harryh
No one cares about the "worse for the wear" problems of digging holes in the
ground in Saudi Arabia. The whole problem is the CO2 that ends up in our air
on the other end of the process.

~~~
maximente
> digging holes in the ground in Saudi Arabia

are you aware of fracking and tar sands and their environmental impacts? you
cannot possibly trivialize those as "digging holes in the ground".

~~~
harryh
Meh. In the grand scheme of things, those environmental impacts are nothing
compared to the problems of climate change.

------
shepwalker
I'm a big 'ol fan of Stripe, but large scale change isn't going to happen
through corporate self regulation.

I wish tech companies that insist they want to make large, positive changes
would come to terms with the fact that putting pressure on political levers is
fundamentally necessary. I would be far more aggressive in my support of this
effort if it was explicitly "we're doing this effort to cover our own tracks
and we're contributing to a PAC that will support politicians who prioritize
sensible environmental policy."

~~~
mLuby
>I wish tech companies that… want… large, positive changes would [accept] that
putting pressure on political levers is fundamentally necessary.

I agree that corporate self-regulation is the laziest political solution. But
instead of doubling down on a mistake, let's get _all_ company hands off the
political levers and have real separation of corp and state. Company influence
on politics is an arms race that entrenches the most powerful firms, many of
which are fundamentally opposed to climate change regulation.

~~~
shepwalker
Absolutely, agreed. But unilateral disarmament isn't the way to do so. If
Stripe has a nice post about vehemently supporting politicians and policies
that aim to get corporate money out of politics, they will quietly get my
upvote and thoughtful nod of approval.

~~~
mLuby
100% I realize I was unclear that I meant corporate lobbying should be used to
end corporate lobbying.

------
aVx1uyD5pYWW
>This leads to Stripe’s Negative Emissions Commitment. We will seek to
purchase negative CO2 emissions at any price per tCO2, starting immediately.
We expect that the best price will initially be very high: almost certainly
more than $100 per tCO2, as compared to the $8 per tCO2 we pay for offsets. We
don’t expect to be able to sequester all of our carbon emissions, both because
the relevant technologies are not yet operating at sufficient scale, and
because it would be financially infeasible for Stripe. And so we commit to
spending at least twice as much on sequestration as we do on offsets, with a
floor of at least $1M per year.

What is the difference between sequestration and offsets?

~~~
tgog
Sequestration means literally filtering CO2 out of the air. Offsets are
essentially just a contract that someone who would otherwise have created
emissions, won't. For example, instead of deforesting an area I own and
selling it for wood, I might sell an offset contract and keep it intact.

------
mapster
I've seen a lot of tech companies carefully analyzing impact of commute.
Essentially re-locating closer/central to employees like using the
commutestudy tool.

100% public transit commute is a long term goal, so work/live distance should
be as short as possible short term.

~~~
rsanek
> 100% public transit commute is a long term goal

Why is this a goal? Public transit isn't inherently cleaner. What makes it
environmentally more attractive than personal ownership of electric vehicles,
or a transit system subsidized by the government instead of run by it?

~~~
mapster
Even personal elec vehicles is a dumb way for millions to get to/from work in
the future. Its very 'western' and old way of thinking. In 100yrs ppl will be
either walking/biking/public transit or remote.

------
esotericn
Proud.

I'm in the process of setting up a new consulting business, and one of my
major commitments is to donate a significant percentage (at least 10%; likely
more) of profits towards CO2 reduction / capture efforts.

I'm watching this space eagerly.

~~~
chrdlu
Trail of Bits (a security consulting firm) recently subscribed to an offset
program that offsets all of the carbon from their employees!

[https://twitter.com/trailofbits/status/1155840018797256711](https://twitter.com/trailofbits/status/1155840018797256711)

~~~
esotericn
I had an incomplete checkout process with Wren.

Just signed up for 200% (I suspect the estimate is on the low side as I don't
know the impact of producing a lot of the things I own).

Cheers for the reminder!

------
ac29
Interesting that they are willing to pay any price the market offers, and
expect to pay over $100/t. I wonder to what degree large scale burying of
biomass would be effective? It'd be effectively the same process that created
the hydrocarbon fuels we use today, which would be fairly effectively
sequestered if we didnt drill them out of the ground.

It seems the idea has certainly been thought of:
[https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0...](https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0680-3-1)

~~~
tlb
The problem with burying biomass is that it gets metabolized by bacteria into
CO2 and (worse) methane, which escapes into the air. Some landfills manage to
capture most of the methane, but on the 100-year time scale it's not clear
that burying is very effective.

~~~
ac29
The study I linked addresses that point - they suggest that "only 0–3% of the
carbon from wood are ever emitted as landfill gas after several decades". I
don't consider myself qualified to evaluate that claim, but it certainly seems
plausible, given that wood clearly decays far slower than, for example,
kitchen scraps found in household bio-waste.

------
sremani
Data centers are factories without smoke stacks, they are voracious consumers
of energy and since "cloud" everything computing is the name of the game at
least for medium term, tech companies would do a favor if they focus on
tackling the datacenter related issue.

Also chip fabrication is a dirty dirty dirty business, as the consumers of the
computer hardware, we as an industry has responsibility to pollution reduction
of this process.

Planting trees is good, giving aid money is good, but cleaning your own shit
is better!

~~~
Nyandalized
I'd argue that "the cloud" makes traditional computing more efficient. Since
their motto is "pay for what you use", it automatically aligns with motives
for the most efficient use.

Not to mention that the usage of computers has reduced the need for much more
power hungry methods. We can now efficiently calculate much stronger, lighter,
easier to manufacture parts and building patterns.

There is no need to drive/ride/walk to a place to hear the message, radio
broadcasting is much more effective, even though it itself consumes power.

------
brazir
I personally wish more companies worked like this. I know in about six months
once i sort out the spend rate for engineering at my startup i am going to be
looking at if we can give back either to environment or to open source. There
is an inevitability as the old die off and the young more hyper aware we forge
ahead to a less pollution intense world.

------
papreclip
They might make up for their electricity bill 1:1 but they'll never go neutral
on the amount of carbon wealth they consume in payment for their services.

Imagine I have a business where I busk for money with my guitar outside of a
coal plant and a single coal minor is my patron. I may be "carbon neutral" but
in fact I owe my whole existence to coal being mined and burnt. Coal is my
life blood and the sole source of wealth in my life. I may as well mine the
coal myself and play guitar for myself, and if you consider me and the miner
to be a unit it's obvious the two of us are living on coal and the fact that
he does all the work while I play guitar hardly means anything.

Companies like stripe are sufficiently separated from coal and oil that they
can believe they don't suck at the teat of fossil fuels, and that the only
coal wealth they consume is whatever powers their light bulbs and servers. But
ultimately you can track back the wealth that comes their way - all of it - to
operations that generate quite a bit more emissions.

We can run subsidies and credits in little isolated corners of our economy,
but it's like running a refrigerator in a closed room. Ultimately you're just
burning wealth which creates a greater load on the wealth-generating machine
that is the fossil fuel industry.

Real advances that make it possible to generate wealth without fossil fuel
money in subsidies should be celebrated. These tech guys taking $1m of their
$100m in profits (the coal miner pays the busker using stripe) to pay their
$1m light bill is a shell game

~~~
Nyandalized
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say. Are you discounting their
efforts? Their motives?

You're not responsible for everyone else, or if you were, they'd not need to
be for themselves.

------
matznerd
Major respect to Stripe for starting this program, as this helps solve a real
problem in the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) field. At Project Vesta (thanks
for the shoutout[1]), while we have a plan for individuals to pay for their
CO2 removal by donating directly for a specific tonnage of olivine to be
placed on a beach in their name, all of the investors/fund advisors who have
approached us and are interested in getting into the CDR field, have generally
been limited in that they can only make investments into an organization if
there is a way to get a financial return. They can't put money in non-profits,
even to potentially help "save the world," as they are still operating with a
fiduciary responsibility and for-profit motives. If no one is paying for
carbon removal, there is no business. For scientists and others trying to
create carbon removal solutions, this represents a major problem, as no matter
how good or cheap their CDR technique is, they also have to come up with a
market of who will buy their CDR "product."

So even though many groups/companies want to get involved in CDR, if there is
no market for paying for "CDR as a product," investors will not put money in.
Having Stripe and other companies guarantee payment for carbon dioxide removal
would actually make a real difference in helping to spur the CDR market.
Companies would be able to point at who will buy their "product" and at what
price, and then investors would be able to invest.

Creating a carbon price is the most obvious and simple solution to make the
"free market" solve a problem created by the inefficiency of the "free market"
in the first place, of not pricing in the real world cost of the externalities
from each tonne of CO2 released. The emitters should have to pay because each
tonne of carbon put out into the atmosphere causes economic damage in terms of
health effects and more. Some 30,000 people die prematurely in the US each
year due to air pollution, yet most emitters do not pay these costs[2].

This is termed the "social cost of carbon" (SCC) and based on estimates from
the U.S. governmental Interagency Working Group in 2013, each 1 metric ton of
CO2 released is said to have an SCC of around $37 (2007 USD).[3] So even
though there is a consensus among most scientists and economists that there
should be a carbon price, and companies technically owe around $37/tonne, no
one is sure when it will occur or at what price it will be at. This
uncertainty and lack of a large scale market is what prevents major private
investments into large scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies.

It is particularly frustrating because if the free market was truly rational,
polluters would be paying for the externalities on their CO2 emissions, and
the CDR field would blossom. By creating a market themselves and also offering
to pay at a range of prices (even though there may be cheaper options
available), Stripe can help foster CDR companies when they are most
vulnerable, helping them breakthrough their technological learning curves and
achieve scale. At the very least, just keeping companies subsidized and
advancing technologically until the world corrects this economic error, is a
worthy cause.

Having a guaranteed CO2 removal price would allow these companies to just
focus on their technology and not have to individually force the global
economic system to price carbon, in order to be viable. So again, great job
Stripe in starting this, and to other companies/organizations, please start
similar initiatives.

[1] "Interesting ideas include crushing rock with natural forces"
[[https://ProjectVesta.org](https://ProjectVesta.org)]

[2] [https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/23/health/air-pollution-us-
death...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/23/health/air-pollution-us-deaths-
study/index.html)

[3]
[https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/expertconsensusrepor...](https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/expertconsensusreport.pdf)

~~~
cca
Thanks Eric. This well-captures what we hope to do. Please drop me a message
at christian@stripe.com -- I'd love to talk about how our projects can work
together.

~~~
aurelwu
Hi Christian, first of all I think it's a great commitment.

May I ask what measures stripe has taken when it comes to energy efficiency to
reduce emissions - often this can be cheaper than cleaning up the mess
afterwards. Do you know, and are at liberty to disclose, how much energy your
datacenters consume and what measures to reduce their footprint have you
taken? Also, I read on stripe's homepage that you heat using natural gas.
While this can result in rather low emissions it hugely depends on the source
of the gas - if the leakage rate is too high (with fracking it often is) , it
can even be worse than lignite especially when looking at shorter timeframes
(20-30 years opposed to the 100 which is often used for the co2eq factor)[1]
so alternative heating options if available might reduce the emissions.

[1]
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.35](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.35)

------
didgeoridoo
Missed opportunity to call this C-- !

~~~
dwohnitmok
C-- the programming language already exists:
[https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/c--/index.html](https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/c--/index.html)

------
iamleppert
What kind of margins do they have that enables them to just throw money around
like this? Is the payments industry that big of a cash machine to allow this
kind of spending that has nothing to do with their core business?

~~~
Nyandalized
You would find that banking and it's related fields are indeed very
profitable.

------
crb002
Best thing you can do to limit carbon emissions is run an efficient business
that gets a high ROI. Dollars to doughnuts, $$$ spent tracks with barrels of
oil burned to crank out those goods/services consumed.

------
hugoromano
Our normal state should be doing good for the planet, and not bragging for
doing the right thing. For starters, Stripe staff should fly far less, invest
in remote working, or research how to make payments with the lowest carbon
footprint. Cash is the baseline. I hope that there isn’t an hidden agenda of
carbon credits as a business.

~~~
TeMPOraL
_Should_. Doesn't mean it's possible.

When the market doesn't favor doing the right thing, companies trying to do it
die quickly, outcompeted by those who don't care. That's one reason why this
has to be a gradual process, involving carbon credits and companies bragging
about doing a bit of the right thing, and hopefully having that bragging be
positively received.

------
mcot2
Why not invest in new solar power generation instead of removing co2 at this
point.

~~~
JimiofEden
Why not both?

At least in terms of priority, the damage is done and is already in the
atmosphere. imo, we need to first focus on cleaning that up and getting some
form of homeostasis before it gets much worse, WHILE working on
solar/nuclear/renewable tech to make sure we don't just relapse and make the
problem worse again.

I'm optimistically hoping that's the route we'd take anyways. Money tends to
say otherwise tho. =(

------
spenrose
Wonderful leadership. Thank you, Stripe!

------
gitgud
So they're basically going to pay for the CO2 emissions at around 100$ per
tonne (10 cents per kg), right?

Well, we can calculate the C02 exhaled by a typical human, as [1] 36.84 mg =
0.03684 kg of CO2 per breath. (0.03684 kg @ 10c per kg) Therefore each breath
you exhale is worth 0.003684 cents....

So how do you want to pay me @stripe?

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-mass-of-the-carbon-
dioxide...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-mass-of-the-carbon-dioxide-
exhaled-in-a-breath)

~~~
rwz
Are you saying you’re going to stop breathing after receiving the money?

