Sierra Club Outings Partners with NativeEnergy Travel Offsets

The 107 year-old wilderness adventure program of the Sierra Club, Sierra Club Outings, has signed on with NativeEnergy Travel Offsets of Burlington, VT, to offer trip participants the ability to calculate and offset the carbon emissions generated by their domestic or international travel enroute to their gateway destination.

Megan Epler Wood, NativeEnergy Travel Offsets’ spokesperson, hails Sierra Club Outings as “the conscience of the environmental community and gatekeeper to credibility.”

Through industry formulas, carbon emissions (measured in tons), primarily from air travel, can be calculated on a per-person, per-flight basis. The Sierra Club’s trip participants may opt to pay money to “offset” these tons, with the monies then funding NativeEnergy’s renewable energy projects.

The Sierra Club Outings website (http://www.outings.sierraclub.org/) will feature a co-branded landing page, linked to during the trip reservation process, where its travelers can opt to make a specific monetary commitment to offset their travel (air or land) to the gateway of their specific trip.

“We’re proud to be working with NativeEnergy Travel Offsets, who we feel provides the best solution currently on the market for our trip participants,” says Tony Rango, director of Sierra Club Outings. The Sierra Club Outings Program has been offering wilderness adventure since 1901. In 2006, they accommodated nearly 4,000 guests on 350 separate itineraries around the country and abroad. In addition, the Club’s chapters take about 150,000 participants yearly on local outings.

“This affiliation is in line with the Sierra Club’s overall mission of running low-impact trips,” says Rango.”Travel — especially flying – emits greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. It’s unrealistic to eliminate flying altogether, but with NativeEnergy’s help we can take a step toward reducing overall emissions.”

Rango says that airline travel accounts for about 2 percent of global carbon emissions. For example, just one roundtrip flight from San Francisco to Paris emits over four metric tons per passenger, compared to an average usage of 20 tons per American per year.

Rango says that the new affiliation with NativeEnergy Travel Offsets will assist the Sierra Club in its mission to reduce U.S. emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. This represents a 2 percent reduction per year for the next 40 years. But, he cautions, carbon offsetting does not absolve us from reducing our emissions, nor does it “undo” the carbon we emit. It must be viewed as part of an overall strategy in addition to purchasing fuel-efficient cars, investing in more efficient appliances, and flying less frequently.

“Reducing your personal carbon footprint is only part of the picture,” Rango says. “It needs to be coupled with far-reaching legislation and effective activism.”

“Travel is still a positive force,” Rango explains. He points out that many international destinations, especially those in developing nations, face tremendous economic pressures to destroy their natural resources. Responsible, sustainable tourism can provide a strong financial incentive to protect those resources. In addition, Sierra Club Outings educates its participants on the environmental struggles faced by the places they visit and gives them the opportunity to help.

Rango says the Sierra Club selected NativeEnergy after going through an extensive research and proposal process. NativeEnergy came out on top for, among other attributes, its high-quality, renewable energy projects, its transparency and customer service.

NativeEnergy Travel Offsets’ team of industry veterans is committed to reducing the environmental impacts of the travel industry, while making these companies work more efficiently as businesses. It is a young company (established on October 18, 2006) that is charged by its parent firm, NativeEnergy (founded by Tom Boucher and Tom Stoddard in 2000), to target travel companies willing to make their operations and tours carbon neutral. (The Intertribal Council on Utility Policy (www.intertribalcoup.org/, a non-profit organization of Great Plains Tribes, holds a majority equity interest in NativeEnergy.)

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