Why I Left Tech to Join Tradewater

Jenny Morgan

Dear Business Owner,

My name is Jenny Morgan, and I recently joined the Tradewater team. I was previously a Tradewater customer working at Microsoft, determined to ensure my organization within Microsoft Azure, became carbon neutral. I was looking for verifiable climate solutions and to emerge triumphant in my ability to “save the world.” As a Tradewater customer, I learned that small solutions can collectively have a big impact.

How did I get here?

It all started for me on a quiet morning in August 2020. Our family, along with the entire globe, was trying to navigate the pandemic, while navigating being parents of two young children. I won’t bore you with the details, but we were having a tough time.

This peaceful August morning, where I could spend a few moments alone, was thrilling. The morning sky was painted vibrant colors of orange and pink. It was a glorious sight to see. I stared in admiration until realizing that the colors may be an indication of wildfire smoke hovering above us.

For the following nine days, the six of us, including two parents, one three-year-old, one seven-month-old, and two large dogs, were unable to go outside due to the air quality in the middle of a pandemic. The smoke was even entering the house. I felt like a cockroach after someone had unleashed an entire aerosol of Raid on my family. This feeling was suffocating. It was something I could not control or reconcile with for some time — until I decided that isn’t who I am. That this isn’t who WE are as humans.

I was no longer going to passively participate in the social and environmental change that was necessary to solidify a safer world. It was no longer enough to wear a “vote” t-shirt, listen to a podcast, or sort my waste into the proper receptacle. We decided that our family must join many others as an active participant in positive change. 

Creating measurable impact.

My husband began an anti-racist group and worked with local officials to protect the safety and rights of our Black American neighbors. I started my own consulting business while juggling a full-time management position with two kids at home. With time being the greatest obstacle for most of us, I focused on what was going produce the most impact.

During my research, I discovered industries that are transforming to participate in the pursuit for the greater good. Companies are adopting a triple-bottom-line approach to measure their success on profit, people, and the planet. There are stories of truth, courage, and hope driven by powerful individuals committing themselves to climate solutions. I discovered partners that could help me bring sustainable and social action into my personal and professional life.

Why I chose Tradewater.

One of those partners was Tradewater. I heard their story on the Planet Money podcast and was intrigued because I had read about their project type in Project Drawdown. Project Drawdown outlines the top 15 things we must do now if we want to mitigate climate change. At the top of the list is the collection, management, and destruction of refrigerant gases. When I heard that Tradewater does the work themselves, provides the proof, and reinvests in local communities, I was eager to meet the team.

In the two years since meeting Tim Brown, CEO, and Kirsten Love, Director of Market Development, we’ve been able to partner on multiple projects, brainstorm additional impact initiatives, and sing their praises to other business leaders within and outside of Microsoft.

Now, I am thrilled to say that I have joined the team. In my role, I will guide others along the journey from striving to doing, just like they did for me. Luckily, thanks to organizations like Tradewater, it is easier than we think. As entrepreneurs, leaders, and community members, we know that the journey must be traveled together. That is why Tradewater recently launched their new initiative, The Carbon Neutral Collective.

Making sustainable impact accessible to all.

The Carbon Neutral Collective (aka. The CNC) provides the opportunity for small to medium-sized businesses to become a sustainable and carbon neutral business – quickly, easily, and efficiently. The CNC respects the entrepreneurial mindset. CNC members do not have to hire a consultant, onboard an entire team, or become an expert in the field.

You simply calculate your carbon footprint, offset your footprint through Tradewater, and then leverage reduction resources and community members to help you lead a profitable and sustainable company. It is the ultimate opportunity to join a network of others just like you. A network with others looking to actively participate in the pursuit of a more sustainable world. All while successfully managing a business.

Leading small businesses to make a big impact.

As I lead the growth of the CNC, I am honored to work with business leaders like you that believe that the small can be mighty. I am excited to get to know your business and provide valuable opportunities with others that are behind the same mission.

All business sizes, industries, and knowledge levels are welcome. It’s a collective movement. We will be the individual threads that create a tapestry of strength, leading business and humanity forward. As Tradewater’s CEO Tim Brown eloquently said, “We sit in a place of privilege because we can do something about climate change.”

Now, let’s get to work. Calculate your carbon footprint today.

Sincerely,

Jenny Morgan
Market Development Manager at Tradewater
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Permanence

Emission reductions are considered permanent if they are not reversible. In some projects, such as forestry or soil preservation, carbon offset credits are issued based upon the volume of CO2 that will be sequestered over future decades—but human actions and natural processes such as forest fires, disease, and soil tillage can disrupt those projects. When that happens, the emission reductions claimed by the project are reversed.

The destruction of halocarbon does not carry this risk. All destruction activities in Tradewater’s projects are conducted pursuant to the Montreal Protocol , which requires “a destruction process” that “results in the permanent transformation, or decomposition of all or a significant portion of such substances.” Specifically, the destruction facilities Tradewater uses must meet or exceed the recommendations of the UN Technology & Economic Assessment Panel , which approves certain technologies to destroy halocarbons, including the requirement that the technology achieve a 99.99% or higher “destruction and removal efficiency.” Simply put, this means that Tradewater’s technologies ensure that over 99.99% of the chemicals are permanently destroyed. During the destruction process, a continuous emission monitoring system is used to ensure full destruction of the ODS collected.

Accuracy

Some carbon offset projects necessarily rely on estimations or assumptions when calculating the emission reductions from project activities. Forestry projects, where developers make assumptions about the carbon that will be sequestered over future decades if trees are conserved, are a perfect example. Such projects sometimes result in an overestimation of the environmental benefit of the project.

Tradewater’s halocarbon projects avoid the issue of overestimation by consistently conducting extremely precise testing and measurement of the amount of refrigerant destroyed in each project.

  • Every container of ODS that Tradewater destroys is weighed by a third-party using regularly calibrated scales. The ODS is then sampled by a third-party and analyzed by an accredited refrigerant laboratory to determine its species and purity. These two steps combine to ensure that credits are issued only for the precise volume and type of refrigerant destroyed.
  • The destruction facilities that Tradewater uses continuously monitor the incineration process during destruction events to ensure that over 99.99% of the ODS is destroyed. This monitoring is mandated by regulatory protocols and is part of the verification process to which projects are subjected.
  • Tradewater accounts for the project emissions created during the collection, transport, and destruction of ODS, and the number of offsets issued is reduced by a corresponding amount. The protocols that we use also build in other reductions to account for substitute chemicals that will be used to replace the destroyed refrigerants. Tradewater publishes this information in the documentation for all its ODS destruction projects. These documents outline how the material was obtained, the project emissions calculations, the test results, and the amount and type of ODS chemicals destroyed, among other information.

    • Additionality

    It is a basic requirement of all carbon offset projects that the underlying project activities are additional. “Additional” means that the projects would not happen in the absence of a carbon market. Tradewater’s halocarbon projects simply would not happen – and the gases would be left to escape into the atmosphere – without the sale of the resulting carbon offset credits. This is because there is no mandate to collect and destroy these gases. It is still permissible to buy, sell, and use halocarbons that were produced before the ban. There are other reasons halocarbon destruction projects are additional:

    • There are no incentives or financial mechanisms to encourage halocarbon destruction. According to the International Energy Agency and United Nations Environment Program, “there is rarely funding nor incentive” to recover and destroy ozone depleting substances in storage tanks and discarded equipment. And collecting, transporting, and destroying halocarbons is time-intensive and expensive. The burden to collect and destroy these gases therefore remains prohibitive outside of carbon offset markets—meaning that if organizations like Tradewater do not do this work, nobody else will.
    • Countries are not focused on the need to collect and destroy halocarbons. The Montreal Protocol has been celebrated as a success because of its production ban. This success, however, ignores the legacy gases produced before the ban and is a blind spot for government regulators. In the U.S., for example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed a Vintaging Model in the 1990s to estimate the quantify of ozone depleting substances left in circulation. Based on the inputs and assumptions put into the model, the EPA predicted that no CFCs would be available for recovery beyond 2020 in the United States. But this prediction did not prove accurate. Tradewater has collected and destroyed more than 1.5 million pounds of CFCs globally in recent years and continues to identify thousands of pounds per week.
    • International carbon accounting standards do not require corporations to measure or track emissions tied to halocarbons, and refrigerants are specifically excluded from Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitments. These commitments derive from emissions reporting under the GHG Protocol, which requires companies to report on emissions only from new generation refrigerants, such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), but does not establish any obligation to report inventories or emissions of refrigerants still in use, such as CFCs and HCFCs. All these factors combine to make Tradewater’s carbon offset projects highly additional. As Giving Green, an initiative of IDinsight, concluded: “Tradewater would not exist without the offset market, so this element of additionality is clearly achieved.” The case for additionality is not so clear for some other project types, such as forestry and landfill gas carbon projects. For example, some forests are already being conserved for their beauty, or for use as parks, and generate carbon offset credits only because those conservation efforts do not yet have full formal protection in place to avoid deforestation in the future. Similarly, methane from landfills can be used to make electricity or captured as compressed natural gas, thereby creating additional revenue streams to support the activities, beyond the sale of carbon credits.