Environmental Statement & Goals
Our Environmental Statement
We believe that what’s good for our planet is good for business.
We make it simple for organizations to get the information they need and the guidance they deserve to help save our planet. We believe in progress over perfection. We know there is a significant impact in the cumulation of many small changes. It’s not about doing everything—it’s about doing something. We’re not here to judge but to help, whether clients are taking the first step toward decarbonization or continuing their path. We apply the same pragmatic approach to our own environmental impacts.
The only facility that CarbonBetter owns and operates is its headquarters in East Austin, which was an old church that was repurposed to create a lower-impact workspace for our team. We are proud to have installed on-site solar at our office, which generated 98% of the total electricity we consumed in 2022 and 74% in 2023. While the City of Austin utility gets to claim the environmental attributes for this generation, we are proud to be contributing nearly as much clean energy to the grid as we consume.
Central Texas is a high water-stress region and is significantly impacted by drought, so minimizing our water consumption is also a high priority. We are already making progress toward our goals and will continue to add to and refine our environmental initiatives as we continue to prioritize progress over perfection.
Our Environmental Goals
| Carbon Neutrality | We commit to going carbon neutral for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions starting in calendar year 2022. Update: Achieved starting in 2022. |
| Quantify Scope 3 Emissions | We commit to quantifying Scope 3 emissions starting in calendar year 2023 and going carbon neutral inclusive of Scope 3 by calendar year 2025. Update: Scope 3 emissions, limited to flight emissions, quantified and offset in 2023. |
| Water Conservation | We commit to minimizing water consumption by maintaining a xeriscaped yard that requires no irrigation (hand watering only), maintaining our permeable pavers that help to recharge aquifers, and maintaining water-reducing equipment indoors, such as our low-flow toilets and automatic sinks. |
Our Environmental Milestones
2023
For the 2023 calendar year, we quantified our carbon footprint for Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions, totaling 60.93 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Scope 3 for 2023 is limited to flight emissions.
Our Scope 1 emissions, primarily from natural gas usage at our headquarters, amounted to 0.017 metric tons of CO2e. Scope 2 emissions, derived from electricity consumption, totaled 15.00 metric tons of CO2e, using data from our utility bills and emission factors from the EPA’s e-GRID database. The significant portion of our footprint, Scope 3 emissions, totaled 45.91 metric tons of CO2e, which consisted of team travel on airplanes.
In line with our commitment to environmental responsibility, we offset a total of 61 metric tons of CO2e to achieve our carbon-neutral goal for 2023 through carefully selected credits from projects that not only align with our sustainability ethos but also contribute to broader environmental and social benefits.
2022
We started by holistically evaluating the actions we have already taken at CarbonBetter headquarters and quantifying our Scope 1 and 2 carbon footprint. For the 2022 calendar year, we quantified our carbon footprint for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, totaling 13.95 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). The emissions represented include both natural gas emissions, quantified utilizing billed consumption rates from Texas Gas and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emission factors and electricity consumption emissions, quantified using City of Austin utility bill data and emission factors from EPA’s e-GRID database. To reach our 2022 carbon-neutral goal for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, we offset 14 metric tons of CO2e with credits from the four projects represented in CarbonBetter’s CBCO Portfolio 22-1.