Farmers & Makers: Alexander Frantzen
Chapter #4: Alexander Frantzen – A New Frontier in Transparency
“The biggest shift needed in the short-term over the next ten years is an aggressive reduction in consumption of all goods and services”
Courtesy Alexander Frantzen
Today in our ongoing Farmers & Makers series we are incredibly grateful to welcome Alexander Franzen as we discuss his work in carbon accounting, ultimately creating what can easily be considered the premier carbon auditor in the United States: Carbon Calories.
In founding Carbon Calories, Alexander has tackled one of the most difficult concepts of global warming and the climate crisis - what can I do? The climate crisis can seem so big and so ingrained in the consumption culture of capitalism, that it oftentimes seems dauntingly impossible for us to confront and ultimately (hopefully) vanquish.
But what Alexander has done is to give each individual person a certain allotment of carbon to “use” per day (called the “Daily Carbon Quota”), and the more companies and organizations that audit their true carbon consumption, report it publicly via what are called Carbon Statements, the more each and every one of us is armed to better measure our individual impacts, and make a difference.
With Carbon Calories we could easily make buying decisions grounded in our beliefs and values! We brought Alexander into the nitty gritty details of how we make our products, and recently released our own Carbon Statements, for this very reason.
Without further adieu, here is our conversation with Alexander. Enjoy!
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M/M: Please tell us the story of Carbon Calories! When did you begin, what drew you to the endeavor?
Alexander: I’ve been assessing my own carbon footprint and building tools for individuals and companies for ten years now, in addition to reviewing our global carbon budget. My work always took me to product-level assessment: that’s how I, as an informed consumer, need to make decisions. And that’s how brands can differentiate and optimize their products and business operations. Carbon Calories makes carbon accounting easy and economical for small businesses so they can stand out and decarbonize.
M/M: How do you see consumers evolving as it relates to our individual carbon quotas? Are people aware that we have a quota? If not, how can we raise awareness?
AF: Many consumers want to make informed decisions and to do so are asking brands to help them do so. Consumers want to know how they can mitigate carbon emissions through their lifestyle choices. While many consumers are aware that their lifestyle carbon footprints need to be reduced, measuring them and setting targets is challenging as there is significant variation among us. This is analogous to how people have different dietary needs. The daily carbon quota standardizes our per capita target emissions to give us a sense of where we stand relative to the global carbon budget.
M/M: Where do you see the biggest potential for the reduction of carbon consumption? Perhaps by industry, or by cultural mindsight shifts?
AF: The biggest shift needed in the short-term over the next ten years is an aggressive reduction in consumption of all goods and services by #globalcitizens who earn more than $75,000 per year. We are among the richest ten percent (10%) of #globalcitizens and our lifestyles account for fifty percent (50%) of global human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. We are most able to reduce emissions by reduction. This is incredibly important because in order to build the scale of renewable energy generating technologies necessary over the next ten years – we must divert existing fossil fuel capacity. We can only divert this fossil fuel towards building renewables if people don’t use said fossil fuel energy for other purposes.
M/M: How do you see the role of Carbon Calories evolving with time? What is the ultimate goal of the company?
AF: Carbon Calories is going to build the QuickBooks of carbon accounting designed for small businesses. Much if not most of the innovation in terms of low-carbon materials, decarbonizing business activities, and producing low-carbon products is being done by small businesses and startups. They, however, are often least able to pay for carbon accounting services which have, historically, been cost- and time-prohibitive. Carbon Calories wants all companies to be able to differentiate and decarbonize their products so consumers can buy them in place of conventional, status quo high-carbon products.
M/M: When were you first exposed to Biodynamics as a method of farming? What potential do you see in it?
AF: While I’ve done consulting for one of the first organic farm in New York state, and am quite familiar with permaculture, biomimicry, and other forms of restorative and regenerative farming – I had never heard of biodynamic farming until I spoke with Maison Made! It’s wonderful to know that biodynamic farming has been widely practiced for decades – based on centuries of farming tradition and knowledge.
M/M: I’m sure you see a lot of greenwashing in your work, so how do you navigate the different claims that you see in the market? Have you had clients that drastically change their messaging due to their work with you?
AF: There is a lot of greenwash. As a rule of thumb I remind myself what we all learned in math class: Show your work. If you only gave the answer, you didn’t get full credit. I look for transparent disclosures when it comes to environmental marketing claims and discount any claims that aren’t made as such.
For example, carbon offsets and climate neutral or carbon neutral claims have become ‘hot’ in the past three to five years, even though they’ve been around for decades. However, I also know that technically: humanity can’t offset more than 10-20% of human-caused emissions in the long-run (if we’re fortunate). Total global annual net CO2 flux by all terrestrial ecosystems (every plant, tree and above/below-ground biomass) is around 9.2 GtCO2 per year; globally humans emit around 55 GtCO2e per year. So, unless a company is disclosing how they are decarbonizing 85% of their emissions, I don’t put much weight on carbon offsets or carbon neutrality claims. Don’t get me wrong: the work done by projects that generate legitimate carbon offsets is incredibly important. I’m skeptical of how we’ve decided to finance them, and how brands are using them (often unknowingly), that’s all.
Finally: no part of our global economy (raw material extraction, processing, manufacture, distribution, consumption and end-of-life waste treatment) is fully decarbonized. So no brand, person or community is decarbonized.
Courtesy Alexander Frantzen
M/M: We always seem to get fairly narrow-minded advice concerning this next question, and maybe it’s too subjective, but what are some of the best ways we can limit our carbon consumption as individuals? I understand that it is dependent on many factors, but in general are there any tips that we can all take that maybe haven’t gotten much attention?
AF: In short, as individuals: flying less, driving less, buying less stuff, using our stuff for longer, improving our homes to need less heating/cooling, and effectively lobbying governments and pressuring companies to decarbonize our energy grid are all excellent ways to affect change.
Flying less is one easy way to reduce our emissions. Only one percent (1%) of aviation passengers account for fifty percent (50%) of global flight emissions. And one intercontinental flight easily causes as much emissions as the greenhouse gas emissions from your entire annual diet of food. So I recommend that people make their holidays and flights count. Driving less will also make a big difference. Other than that: buying less stuff really does add up. This goes hand-in-hand with using what we have much longer. Heating and cooling our homes is a big source, but is often difficult for people to affect, either because they rent or because capital improvements are expensive and time-consuming. But air-sealing, insulation, installing heat-recovery ventilators, and living warmer/cooler all help. Few of us can build or finance renewable energy generating facilities: so for many of us the best we can do right now is pressure our representatives and companies to build renewables.