Bloomington construction company becomes largest yet to join Carbon Neutral Indiana

A Bloomington business has become the largest to date to offset its carbon footprint through a nonprofit based in Indianapolis called Carbon Neutral Indiana.

Carbon Neutral Indiana is the creation of Purdue graduate Daniel Poynter, who serves as the organization's executive director.

The concept is simple, Poynter said. Individuals, businesses and other organizations can pay Carbon Neutral Indiana a monthly amount that is then used to "offset" or "balance" their contribution to earth-warming gases.

“To make it simple, you pay a trash company to pick up your trash, right? So, you can pay our nonprofit to pick up your carbon trash,” Poynter said.

Poynter’s company uses an online questionnaire to measure, among other things, the amount of carbon dioxide — one of the largest greenhouse gases — produced by an applicant for service.

The application mainly measures the carbon cost of the applicant’s electricity, heating and travel consumption. In Indiana, most electricity comes from utilities fueled almost entirely by coal and natural gas, both of which release carbon when burned.

Joining Carbon Neutral Indiana costs around $15 to $20 a month for an individual to "clean up their carbon trash," Poynter said. “We sell carbon credits to businesses and individuals throughout Indiana.” One of the businesses, he noted, is Loren Wood Builders, a Bloomington construction firm.

Seth McCanse, project manager and chief financial officer at Loren Wood, said by email that Poynter “helped us quantify our carbon impact for our daily business operations as well as the cost to offset those emissions.”

McCanse said the cost was “very reasonable: less than one-tenth of 1% of our revenue.”

Loren Wood has taken several steps to reduce its carbon emissions, McCanse said.

“We installed a large solar array on our office. We purchased and use an electric F150 Lightning pickup truck, and we regularly research methods and materials to quantify and reduce the carbon impact of our construction builds.”

Joining Carbon Neutral Indiana has allowed Loren Wood to take those efforts a step further, McCanse said.

“We’re offsetting our daily operations, including things like owning, maintaining, and providing electricity and gas for our office and shop buildings. It also includes offsets for our daily driving and travel around town.”

Carbon Neutral Indiana routes the revenue it receives to help fund enterprises that are reducing CO2, Poynter said. Some examples include:

• Afognak Forest, on an island 25 air miles north of Kodiak, Alaska: Forty miles long and 25 miles wide, the island is the second largest in the Kodiak group. “In the past, some of the forest was clear-cut, leaving nothing, without any program to replant trees,” Poynter’s company reported. “Projects like this one regrow and protect the forest and animal habitats.”

• Terra, Mississippi, oxide abatement: At a wood-processing plant, “one byproduct is nitrous oxide, a highly-potent greenhouse gas. Usually, it’s vented to the atmosphere as it has no economic value. Projects such as this capture and reduce those emissions,” according to Carbon Neutral Indiana.

• A landfill in British Columbia, Canada: “As products in landfills rot, landfills release methane into the air,” Carbon Neutral Indiana reports. “Methane is a greenhouse gas, like carbon dioxide, but it’s about 30 times worse. Projects like this capture that methane … and burn it to generate electricity.”

Poynter grew up in Auburn, Indiana, and is trained as a software engineer, he said.

“About 5 years ago I took a year off and interviewed 300 people — a ‘do-it-yourself graduate studies program’ — and that’s when I created Carbon Neutral Indiana.”

Poynter’s enterprise has special importance for the state of Indiana, which, according to recognized national agencies, ranks among the top 10 states producing greenhouse gases.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Carbon Neutral Indiana helps businesses offset carbon