36 ms·

Stripe Climate

384 points by constantinum 6y ago

parhamn 6y ago
This is really cool! Kudos to the team there for doing this!! Semi-shameless plug (it's for the environment!!): We're launching something similar next week here [1]. Instead pulling off revenue we're helping teams plant trees when they close an issue or merge a PR. I think the additional visibility to the team members as they work has a great feel-good vibe! We currently connect with Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab & JIRA. We also give badges to show on your repos. Here is a video to see what it looks like [2]. If you'd like to join the beta please email at parham@cloudsynth.com! [1] https://cloudsynth.com/social-impact/trees https://cloudsynth.com/social-impact/trees [2] https://www.loom.com/share/2ad9a30d13aa4cd78ed98308b0d37283 https://www.loom.com/share/2ad9a30d13aa4cd78ed98308b0d37283
- ericvanular 6y ago
  Hey parhamn, Cloudsynth looks awesome. If you'd like to connect with a community of climate action oriented people, feel free to post about your work over at https://collective.energy https://collective.energy (I'm the founder). For anyone else who cares about making a positive impact on the planet, come join us as well!
- CoffeePython 6y ago
  This is pretty awesome! How does pricing work for this?
  - parhamn 6y ago
    We're providing this service for free. Your team sets your monthly donation limit and we just handle everything else. 100% goes to #TeamTrees.
- tasogare 6y ago
  This smptomatic of the green-washing trend. Planting trees by itself is not an action that is inherently good: it is if placed where useful for instance to fight desertification, it can be dommageable in other cases such as planting non native species, or planting moni-cture forest. As usual with this kind of initiative, there is no info on the type of trees planted, where they are and why it does matter to the local environnement. There is no way to verify impact. My comment might be harsh, but most of the releved criticized can be easily addressed with more information.
  - aclimatt 6y ago
    You're absolutely right, it can be easily addressed with more information. So perhaps it would have been worth it to get that information first and level a more applicable criticism before posting valueless FUD. https://teamtrees.org/ https://teamtrees.org/
  - parhamn 6y ago
    Sure, it's a fair question :) The idea came to me when I saw the popular youtube campaign TeamTrees [1], and wondered how we can achieve a similar throughput on a regular basis. We're still looking for t he best partners forward the money to. We'd love to allocate to any provider we think is going to do the most for the climate. I'm happy to forward they money to Stripe as well if they have better strategies for this. It seems fine to forward it to the team that Mark Robber and Mr. Beast put together (assuming they have done proper due diligence given Elon & Tobi have donated 1m respectively), until we find better strategies. [1] https://teamtrees.org/ https://teamtrees.org/
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    What do you think about this option from Project Wren? It looks like the money is going to an established organization (TIST) run with an eye towards everything you said. https://projectwren.com/projects/community-tree-planting https://projectwren.com/projects/community-tree-planting I just found out about Project Wren recently, turns out they are a YC company. I want to pull the trigger on signing up for it but I want to be really sure what I'm donating towards is actually effective.
  - garth5689 6y ago
    If anyone wants some evidence supporting this comment's overall idea, here's an applicable podcast episode to provide some examples of when indiscriminately planting trees might have unintended consequences: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/for-the-love-of-peat/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/for-the-love-of-peat/
dinkleberg 6y ago
It’s always great to see things like this that remove the barrier to doing some good. Stripe has a huge user base, so it’ll be interesting to see how much impact this is able to make.
paws 6y ago
ICYMI there's a public repo that has more details (and answered several of my questions in one convenient place) https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-materials/ https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-material... Nice to see the transparency on this.
makerofspoons 6y ago
This is excellent and a great option for responsible users! We should not get distracted from the reality however that to really move the needle we need universal carbon pricing.
- evanlivingston 6y ago
  And to stop consuming so many goods!
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    And to stop doubling our population every 30 years.
corentin88 6y ago
Kudos to Stripe and the team behind for this proposal. Unfortunately, it's only available for US companies. Hope they will expand it soon.
- nanr 6y ago
  Yes, we’re starting with U.S. businesses at first and working to quickly expand to more countries. Stay tuned!
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Are you working with Tomorrow ("Tmrow") [1] at all? They're doing something similar with their Bloom Climate [2] product in Europe (their product helps businesses measure their impact and offset accordingly). Also the folks who built and run https://electricitymap.org https://electricitymap.org and who Google is using to schedule compute workloads around low carbon intensity electrical generation [3] [4]. Definitely understand there is a "Faux Pax" (mea culpa) element about mentioning competitors in what looks very similar to a Show HN, but there's a lot of climate work to be done so I hope y'all can connect if you haven't yet. [1] https://www.tmrow.com/ https://www.tmrow.com/ [2] https://bloomclimate.com https://bloomclimate.com [3] https://www.tmrow.com/blog/announcing-our-partnership-with-google/ https://www.tmrow.com/blog/announcing-our-partnership-with-g... [4] https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/data-centers-work-harder-sun-shines-wind-blows https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/data-center... Disclosure: No relation except as a volunteer contributor.
PaulHoule 6y ago
I like it that they are attempting at least four different schemes. There is a lot of risk in some schemes, for instance it is easy to say you left some trees standing but it is not easy to know somebody won't cut them in five years. For instance, it will be hard to prove that the Vesta scheme works. Putting all the money in the lowest cost strategy would be likely to fail. If you spread it out probably some will succeed and others will fail.,
- faitswulff 6y ago
  What are the other 3 schemes?
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    Scroll down on the page, they have a list of partners at the bottom who are doing very different things, but none of them are doing the traditional "inject CO2 into a saline aquifer" solution which can be attached to biofuel combustion or fermentation.
    - faitswulff 6y ago
      Ah, I thought you meant schemes other than Stripe Climate.
sritchie 6y ago
If anyone from Stripe is reading - is it possible yet for me to simply donate money to the portfolio you’ve assembled without running a business? We purchase monthly offsets now and I’d love to switch to funding direct carbon capture (and will happily spend more).
- nanr 6y ago
  Hi, Nan from Stripe! Accepting direct contributions from individuals isn’t a central focus for us right now, but we intend to publish what we learn about carbon removal, which can help inform your own efforts. Some of our partners accept contributions directly: https://www.climeworks.com/subscriptions https://www.climeworks.com/subscriptions, https://projectvesta.org/crowdfunding/ https://projectvesta.org/crowdfunding/
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    Climeworks? That's not great news IMO. They recently pivoted to soliciting direct investments from the public, and their previous business model was to pipe CO2 into greenhouses to make lettuce grow faster or to sell it to soda bottling plants. Wish I was joking. But if the tech has promise who cares right? Well... Climeworks first demo site had (as of ~2017) the potential to remove 900 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere per year. Over one million of these facilities, ignoring the carbon cost to create them, would be needed to remove just 5% of annual CO2 released. It looks like, as of their last press release, they have 14 sites now, with another one planned that will remove 4000 tonnes of carbon per year. Right now on this trajectory, what they are doing is not showing promise of scaling to the extent needed. Vesta on the other hand has more yet to shake out before we can fairly assess their potential. With trial sites now well underway, I eagerly await their findings.
- shinryuu 6y ago
  Nori.com might interest you they work with carbon removal as well.
- deanclatworthy 6y ago
  If you want to do this, try compensate.com
atilev 6y ago
Great initiative, though why not use those funds to also sustain forests and natural carbon capturing methods in the tropical regions? Use those funds, so that jobs can be created where forests are getting cut down for agriculture use? We could preserve our natural carbon capturing biosphere as well as invest in carbon capture technology. There will be little incentive to preserve biosphere lands.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Agreed, this seems like a more immediately effective vector, on multiple fronts. Let's face it: this 1% transaction fee is going to mostly go into the hands of administrators, bureaucratic types, functionaries, middlemen, and grifters who have gotten themselves into the right place at the right time to proselytize a bunch of catabolic techniques to "capture carbon" that use more energy to capture carbon than was produced by releasing that same amount of carbon. It makes virtually zero sense.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
The history of the carbon removal companies is not good (mostly due to the large incentive to game the measures), and smells of indulgences. However, this industry is still quite young... EDIT : Also this initiative seems to be very research-focused, rather than be just about using already known methods?
- core-questions 6y ago
  It remains to be seen if carbon removal can be done in a way that makes sense thermodynamically (i.e. it takes tremendous energy input to do, where does that energy come from, is it using carbon-emitting energy from elsewhere on the grid, etc). If at any point a carbon-emitting energy source is involved, there's no way that the system is going to be absorbing as much carbon from the air as was emitted for the same amount of energy. If we're going to flatten the peaks of power availability with anything, it should probably be novel energy storage techniques so that the carbon that is output is not wasted, so the energy is actually used eventually for something productive. We already have a carbon removal system that is viciously efficient and solar powered: it's called a plant.
  - theptip 6y ago
    Enhanced Rock Weathering was discussed recently[1], and that is cost effective at something like $100/ton. I don’t think there is any question about whether it’s thermodynamically possible (trees do it, as you say), it’s more whether it’s economically possible; without a carbon tax there is no real incentive for most producers to offset. (If we are relying on demand from “ethical consumers” I don’t think we are going to shift things very far.) 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/spreading-rock-dust-on-fields-could-remove-vast-amounts-of-co2-from-air https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/spreadin...
  - coldpie 6y ago
    You're right that energy costs need to be accounted for when examining a potential capture method. But this is so blindingly obvious that of course the researchers are doing it. It is always accounted for when they are making their claims. As a single example see this recent article[1]: > A simple chemical model estimated the rate of weathering for the crushed rock based on the local soil conditions. They also calculated energy requirements based on distance from likely rock sources, as well as accounting for the energy mix available to run everything. (The more fossil fuel burned to carry out the work, the less CO2 removed from the atmosphere in the final accounting.) If it was true that any carbon capture method that uses energy will emit more carbon that it captures, then the researchers wouldn't have bothered doing the research. Yet they have, and do. Carbon capture is a very good avenue of research for mitigating climate change in the near term as we transition to new power sources. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/spreading-rock-dust-on-farms-could-be-a-major-climate-action/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/spreading-rock-dust-...
glintik 6y ago
Stripe, what’s wrong with you? Climate, are you serious? If your developers have some free time - please fix UI bugs in dashboard.
- mrwnmonm 6y ago
  What the hell? They are trying to do something good, and that is your response? AND THEY ARE ONE OF THE BEST DESIGNERS IN THE WORLD
asien 6y ago
This is a great initiative depending on where the money goes, but fundamentally the race to solve global emission is doomed to fail. European countries like Sweden or Iceland have low footprint because of the population lifestyle and the energy coming from abundant renewable source. If the fund go through « iterative » innovation I don’t see how this is supposed to solve anything ? There is countless studies on those topics.
- thiago_fm 6y ago
  Based on what you said, there are two ways to strike the problem: 1. "population lifestyle": consumers must change their habits and companies must change their products/factries to reduce footprint 2. "energy coming from abundant renewable source": invest in renewable energy sources Both of them need funding. Stripe is requesting funding for this. How is this not helping? "There's countless studies on those topics." isn't anywhere an argument.
syndacks 6y ago
I take serious moral concern with the notion that we can "spend our way out of climate disaster" as these initiatives ultimately suggest. Furthermore, this makes individuals feel better about doing something (having agency). This is a false sense of making a difference; we need sweeping, fundamental changes to address climate change, not at the individual level, but at the state level and beyond.
- coldpie 6y ago
  > we need sweeping, fundamental changes to address climate change, not at the individual level, but at the state level and beyond. If that isn't happening, what's your next suggestion?
- thinkharderdev 6y ago
  Those aren't mutually exclusive though. Even in the most optimistic decarbonization scenarios we would still need to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere to avoid >2 degrees of warming.
- feoren 6y ago
  Do you think the existence of these small efforts makes the larger efforts harder or easier? More or less likely?
  - evanlivingston 6y ago
    My personal belief is that the larger effort looks a lot like early COVID lockdowns. We more or less did exactly what we need to do: Driving only when absolutely necessary, only purchasing exactly what was necessary, furloughing most industry, turning the lights off at the local big box stores, grocery stores only open 10-5, etc... To me, these smaller efforts feel like they distract from the more grim reality that our behavior needs to drastically change.
- seymore_12 6y ago
  The term for this is "moral licensing". It is dangerous path i.e. I jogged 30 mins, I can have this Snickers bar now...
gazelleeatslion 6y ago
WOAH - That logo looks 100% identical to scotch.io. Even the animation... Not suggesting anything but wow what the odds. Great program. Not enough organizations / people prioritizing climate and always great to see efforts by a business. Also, FWIW “Carbon Capture” is a weird space and a bunch of young crazy tech worth looking into for engineer minded folks (direct air capture for example). Lot of love, hate, skepticism from people, industry, scientist, activist, NGO, legislators but regardless offsets markets (even a global one) or cutting back is definitely not enough we need to do.
- gazelleeatslion 6y ago
  For the downvotes: https://scotch.io/tutorials/building-the-new-scotchio-animated-svg-logo https://scotch.io/tutorials/building-the-new-scotchio-animat...
googthrowaway42 6y ago
"In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence (Latin: indulgentia, from indulgeō, 'permit') is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins".[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and all of the saints".[2]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence
- theptip 6y ago
  Unlike sin, CO2 is fungible; if you put it in here and take it out there, the net really is zero.
- jackdeansmith 6y ago
  If sin were a global problem where the total amount of sin in the world caused suffering, and indulgences actually reduced the total amount of sin in the world, the system of indulgences would make perfect sense.
gravitystorm 6y ago
Carbon capture is necessary in the long term, for particular emissions that are hard to avoid (like specific industrial processes and parts of agriculture). But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity, then the money being spent on carbon capture is being spent terribly ineffectively. And globally, we don't have the time or money to waste. For example, most electricity grids are still partially carbon-intensive, despite renewable sources being cheap and available and in use. Simply buying some more solar panels and hooking them to a carbon-intensive grid will displace coal or gas emissions by the following lunchtime, far more cost-effectively than any form of carbon capture. I understand the principle on working on research projects that have a long lead time. But Stripe should treat carbon capture as such, and could have a more cost-efficient climate strategy: put most of this money today into the most cost-efficient solutions available today, rather than putting its entire budget into the least cost-efficient solution.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MuffinFlavored 6y ago
  > But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity Coal and gas fired electricity can be easily and cheaply displaced today? Then why isn't it? I was under the impression that we needed coal + gas still because it wasn't easy or cheap to meet the energy level needs of today with alternatives.
  - mperham 6y ago
    The price of wind and solar is coming down so fast that what didn't work in 2015 is perfectly feasible in 2020. My town's sustainability plan was developed in 2014, passed in 2020 and it's already obsolete. Many organizations are planning today based on data that is already out of date.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    Well, it can easily be displaced at low market penetration for wind/solar. At high levels, like well over 50%, storage cost starts to be a serious issue.
immmmmm 6y ago
Removing carbon from the atmosphere is a fight against the second law of thermodynamic. To win a fight against Entropy one needs energy, and typically a lot of. My question is simple: where do we find enough energy to capture the carbon that was emitted during the 200 last years? Because we consume already too much energy i fear..
- politician 6y ago
  Uranium?
- coldpie 6y ago
  Wind, solar, tidal energy. Your question is like number zero on the list of carbon sequestration questions, obviously they have thought about that problem.
  - baron_harkonnen 6y ago
    They have thought about it but not solved it. We haven’t solved our current energy needs, or anywhere even close to that with renewable, clean energy. We don’t know how to scale it so that > 50% of grid power can be from intermittent renewables. So power large scale carbon sequestration is still an unsolved problem.
- JshWright 6y ago
  And until we're fully transitioned to carbon neutral energy, isn't that energy better spent replacing CO2 emitting energy sources?
  - coldpie 6y ago
    Who do I give 1% of my profits to to replace a nearby coal plant?
- valw 6y ago
  The crazy thing about it, I think, is that removing CO2 from the atmosphere rather than where it's readily concentrated like power and cement plants, is picking the worse amount of entropy to fight.
tima101 6y ago
Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Simply fund reforestation efforts. Plus many wildlife species will be saved from extinction. For example, orangutans in forests of Borneo island. EDIT And besides, humans will survive climate change, we are 7.8 billion. But we made 1000s of species go extinct. So I say carbon capture is the wrong problem to solve.
- bpicolo 6y ago
  This is exactly the sort of effort that this revenue redirection goes to. You can see their applicants: https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-materials/tree/master/Project%20Applications https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-material... Droneseed, for example, is directly applicable
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Trees haven’t been carbon sinks for hundreds of millions of years [1]. They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay. Short of planting and burying gigatonnes of forest, trees aren’t going to be our way out of this. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    What about trees used as building material?
    - FooHentai 6y ago
      Extends the period during which some carbon is sequestered but still ultimately returns to the atmosphere - Typical wood building construction periods are in the order of 50 years expected lifespan. That's with treated woods too, which introduce issues with environmental contamination from their treatment methods. Untreated lumber construction is more in the order of 10 years useful building life and another 10 years (guesstimate) breakdown period.
alien1993 6y ago
Yet another way to feel like you're doing something while doing absolutely nothing, or maybe even worse. Keep it up people!
- dubcanada 6y ago
  I mean donating money to CarbFix for example is not exactly doing nothing?
- joshmanders 6y ago
  Giving money is doing something.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Giving money is making yourself feel good. Whether that actually achieves anything is another question altogether. But giving money to achieve something is difficult because you need to invest time and effort to investigate where to give and to whom.
- lolsal 6y ago
  Not every thing we do has to solve every problem immediately and entirely. Incremental progress is good.
- valw 6y ago
  As should be known in a community of programmers, it's misguided to blame tools from their potential abuses. Every single tool for the ecological transition can be misused for green-washing, from solar panels to electric cars to carbon taxes. Let's welcome and improve the tools, while keeping an eye on how people use them.
akhilcacharya 6y ago
This is legitimately strange. Between this and their magazine, what does this have to do with payment processing?
- dubcanada 6y ago
  It's a company, companies are allowed to do something besides their core focus.
- frakkingcylons 6y ago
  What’s strange about it? I’d not be surprised if some sizable fraction of Stripe customers wanted to help reduce the effects of climate change.
- kisamoto 6y ago
  I would say it's more a corporate (arguably moral) obligation to help transition to a more sustainable society in balance with the natural world.
sudhirj 6y ago
@orbuch can we get an API to set the percentage for each purchase programmatically? or at least vary it by country? I’d like to increase prices and the percentage for customers from countries who don’t do a good job handing climate change.
- orbuch 6y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion! You can set the percentage with just a few clicks in the Dashboard right now. We’re exploring what the right API experience might look like for Stripe Climate in future.
redwoolf 6y ago
While things like this are valuable, it still places the onus on consumers to change their behavior to combat climate change. Not until large polluters are charged for their carbon production, or are compelled to contribute to carbon removal will this have a net benefit. This is conscience-friendly capitalism at best.
jl2718 6y ago
Sorry, but this feel-goodism around carbon capture doesn’t work. They paid $775/ton. Coal is $30/ton. Those are not carbon-free facilities and salaries. Capture requires energy that could be used to reduce carbon emissions demand. 2nd law of thermodynamics says you can’t win this game. The best carbon capture technology is plants and plankton. The best carbon strategy is to use less. Buying offsets feels like penitential indulgences.
- tkzed49 6y ago
  The linked article specifically explains that this does not involve the traditional practice of purchasing offsets and is focused on research.
  - sampo 6y ago
    > is focused on research So while their punchline is "Remove carbon as you grow your business", when you read the fine print, they don't even promise to remove any carbon? At least the fine print is honest.
    - jl2718 6y ago
      Well let's look at these projects: https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases {Climeworks: startup, Project Vesta: non-profit, CarbonCure: startup, Charm: startup} Smells like an investor scheme to pump revenues. "Honest" fine print would disclose any and all financial interest in these startups by Stripe corporate officers.
- ishjoh 6y ago
  My optimism for carbon capture is because it allows a politics free Arbitrage opportunity. Generating hydro electric power in Canada to capture CO2 is a real opportunity, and yes today it is far too expensive, but as more research is done technology is improved those prices will come down. My pessimism for a political solution hinges on the fact that the leading CO2 producers in the world are unlikely to agree on drastic CO2 cuts: China: 28% USA: 15% India: 7% Russia: 5% https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi...
chrismorgan 6y ago
Meanwhile, this page has a pointless colourful simulation/animation going on that immediately makes my laptop’s fan speed up as it makes the CPU consume another few watts, and makes scrolling janky too.
abalone 6y ago
The only realistic solution to carbon removal is massive government investment, like most other major Silicon Valley core technologies. We need the Green New Deal. Anything less is posturing. I would even go so far as to say that on an issue of this importance, where we have maybe a decade left to turn the tide, giving the impression that private enterprise can solve it is irresponsible. Put those donations into GND activism — it’s a political problem.
- antr 6y ago
  I'm an energy investor (primarily focused on renewables), and I couldn't disagree more. I could go on an on with examples of how government intervention has created busts across the renewables space for the past 20 years, and has thrown down the drain billions of tax payer money. I'd like to keep governments out of something that works without them.
  - defterGoose 6y ago
    It almost certainly doesnt though, and your personal experience over the last two decades or whatever probably means squat. If the US government is/was capable of succeeding with the Manhattan and Apollo projects, there's no reason to believe that the same wouldn't be true of similar gargantuan efforts today. I'm not saying that the US can solve AGCC by itself, but I am saying that uncoordinated efforts by loosely coupled private entities cannot.
    - gwright 6y ago
      > It almost certainly doesnt though, and your personal experience over the last two decades or whatever probably means squat. We all know that an anecdote is not data, but being so dismissive towards someone with specific industry knowledge seems inappropriate.
      - falcolas 6y ago
        FWIW, the grandparent's industry specific knowledge is in investment into developing renewable energy companies. This isn't very applicable to the article or problem at hand.
markkat 6y ago
Why not direct the money to the planting of trees?
- MrDresden 6y ago
  We won't fix this climate catastrophe by placing all of the eggs in one basket.
  - markkat 6y ago
    I agree.
- jackdeansmith 6y ago
  Trees eventually rot or burn, carbon stored in the biosphere can be a useful "capacitor" for reducing atmospheric carbon, but in the long run we really need to put it back in the geosphere where we got it from.
  - markkat 6y ago
    Rotting trees (and the leaves they drop) add carbon to the ground, creating organic soil.
say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
If Stripe were to go ahead and take a few pennies off of its own cut, I'd be OK with that.
graeme 6y ago
Would this or any portion of this be considered a business deduction? Eg a marketing expense where you can show social responsibility for prospective customers?
- nanr 6y ago
  Nan from Stripe's Climate team here! You might be able to deduct it as a business expense, but you’ll want to talk to your tax advisor first. We have a little more on this in our FAQ: https://stripe.com/docs/climate/faqs https://stripe.com/docs/climate/faqs
e_commerce 6y ago
Please reduce fees. We don't need a zillion PR initiatives. Reduce fees.
el_nahual 6y ago
Quick reminder that carbon removal is a necessary but secondary step. We need to stop pumping more carbon into the air faster than we need to stop taking it out, simply because it takes more energy to get carbon out of the air than the energy that carbon was used for in the first place. To use a financial analogy: We have a high-interest credit card. That debt has compounding interest rates, and the interest rate is accelerating because of positive feedback loops. A "carbon removal" strategy is basically like putting X dollars on our accelerating-rate credit card in order to invest X in a fund with a lower interest rate than the card itself. Obviously this will result in spiraling debt. The ONLY solution is to take carbon spending to ~0 and only then focus on removing it from the air.
- colincooke 6y ago
  While ideal, this isn't very realistic. Likelier is that we will slowly get off carbon intensive energy sources and production mechanisms, but fail to move off them entirely for a long period. In this period it is essential that we invest in the technology required to stablize our climate, i.e. carbon capture. With the proper clean energy generation capacity these systems can exist in harmony. Where carbon capture buys us more time to get more people on board with cleaner mechanisms. In addition, as this page points out, sustained investment is essential to technological development. By pushing down the cost of capture we allow for new economic opportunities, which provide both incentives (carbon tax for example) and direct benefits (using that tax income for capture).
  - el_nahual 6y ago
    I agree it's not realistic, but it's actually more realistic than the alternative. The key here is that every new emission today multiplies because of positive feedback. So every day that passes, the problem of scrubbing enough carbon actually becomes harder--whereas the problem of simply not putting it out there keeps the same magnitude. Put differently, it costs "one less airplane trip" to prevent the carbon associated with 1 flight out of the air, but it costs an increasing amount of trips to get it out. Lastly... we know how to keep carbon out of the air. It's a politically difficult problem but one with a known solution. Just stop doing things. And stop doing them by taxing them to oblivion.... whereas we don't actually know how to get carbon out of the air in a clean way with sufficient magnitude in order to prevent runaway growth. And it goes without saying that in that scenario we'd probably have to reduce emissions as well! The argument that reducing emissions to ~0 is unrealistic is true, but it's more realistic than the alternative.
valw 6y ago
I'm surprised to not see these investments directed towards the voluntary carbon market, in which projects such as those REDD+ certified achieve more than 10X higher efficiency, with significant co-benefits in biodiversity and support to the local communities (here's an example I give often: https://standfortrees.org/ https://standfortrees.org/). It looks like the projects were chosen through the biases of Silicon Valley, chosen to be futuristic and technologically impressive rather than impactful. Carbon credits markets sometimes have a bad press due to the abuses in carbon offsetting approaches, but since the approach here is voluntary action rather than offsetting, I see no reason not to use them. What seems more sensible to you, financing Western entrepreneurs at $100/tCO2e, or financing nature preservation, energy transition and poverty alleviation in developing countries at $10/tCO2e? Thanks Stripe, but I'll keep buying carbon credits.
- kisamoto 6y ago
  There is a distinction between carbon credits and negative emissions. I wouldn't say these projects are bias towards silicon valley style there is simply a growing acceptance that nature based solutions - whole undeniably important and essential - are simply not enough. They are cheap but slow. Trees can be wiped out with wild-fires releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere. Negative emissions technologies such as bio-oil, direct air capture and storage, olivine and biochar, are developing to help support nature based solutions and remove quickly. While expensive at the moment I believe they will become cheaper as the technologies and processes mature and the economies of scale kick in. I don't say this to convert you - nature is a great way to help combat the climate crisis - however do not dismiss this essential step for our future.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Any studies you can cite to support your beliefs you're sharing here?
    - jackdeansmith 6y ago
      As far as nature based solutions go, this study on the potential for afforestation is a good place to start: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14887/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14887/. Simply put, there isn't enough land to plant enough trees to get us out of this mess. That doesn't mean that planting trees isn't useful, I think the paper makes a good case for why it's cost effective and buys time, but it isn't enough alone. My personal take is that the cheap carbon credits are indeed a more cost effective use of money right now, but it's low hanging fruit that we will run out of soon.
gist 6y ago
Call it what it is an attempt to pull at the heart strings of customers by associating with the cause of the year. (Similar to companies putting 'fight cancer' ribbons on their products). What I want is a company to focus on giving me a good experience and helping me when there is a problem that's what matters to me. Not 'we are part of the solutions to societies ills' theater.
dangrossman 6y ago
Does anyone else remember when Hacker News had a badge at the bottom of each page for "CO2Stats Green Certification"? Would've been around 2009.
marvin 6y ago
Is there anywhere I can credibly pay any reasonable amount of money to offset my CO2 emissions? I would be willing to pay a monthly salary for this, if the effect can be demonstrated to be sustainable and permanent. I've been wondering how the various companies that have CO2 offset programs do it; whether it's credible or not.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  One is tempted to advise, lower your carbon footprint to start with! But its hard to figure out how. Most of the public infrastructure we use to survive is beyond our control. Drive or take the bus? Which is better? Or walk, but the extra food you consume is a worse contributor to your footprint! So remain a couch potato and work from home. But illness, depression and early decrepitude cost society too, which has its impact on CO2 footprint...
  - marvin 6y ago
    Can't reduce them to zero. CO2 capture and sequestering, or the same effect through other means that don't have externalities, is required to go CO2 neutral on a personal level.
- jdlshore 6y ago
  The Nature Conservancy has a carbon offset program that I use. They're credible. The money goes towards purchasing and managing land for forests and net carbon removal. It's surprisingly cheap. They seem to have changed their site, though, and I can no longer find the page that allowed a direct carbon offset donation. Also, here in Oregon, you can pay the electric company a small fee (for me, about $11-12 a month) to guarantee that your electricity use is 100% offset by carbon-neutral generation (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear). Also in Oregon, you can pay the natural gas company a fee (for me, $5.50 per month) to offset your natural gas usage with "bio digesters." I'm more skeptical about their efficacy.
- jackdeansmith 6y ago
  It depends on what you mean by offset. If you're okay with carbon stored in the biosphere by trees then there are plenty of programs. If you want to put carbon back in the geosphere (since trees eventually rot or burn) sending money to climeworks is the best thing available right now. Their DAC + geologic storage approach is expensive at around $1k/ton, but highly credible.
spditner 6y ago
I am curious to know what the business case looked like to get "climate" added as a feature to the product roadmap in a for-profit company.
- cultus 6y ago
  Corporate green-washing initiatives like this just make our economic system look good, while doing no meaningful good. These corporations have political power, but they don't use it to solve this crisis.
tabbott 6y ago
I don't think it's possible for this sort of individual, opt-in action to be material to the climate problem; problems at this scale can only be solved by government action. If Stripe raises $30M/year from this program, it'd be like 10000x too little to be significant to our carbon problem. (Maybe it could have some minor R&D acceleration impact for the carbon removal techniques they're looking at). The root cause of our climate problem is the fossil fuel industry having successfully manipulated the government and public to prevent real action on climate change, for decades. The Drilled podcast is a good resource for primary source material on how oil companies systematically manufactured climate change denial. I would prefer that Stripe allocate the funds to groups working to counter the fossil fuel industry's misinformation strategy. $30M/year would be a significant budget for that sort of work.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  If Stripe raises $30M/year for this program, there will be $30M/year spent on validation and R&D that one can point to and say "look, that can be done and works". I agree that governments should be making large grants for research in renewables and capture everywhere, and tax fossil fuels enough to make them uncompetitive. But they aren't, and part of the way you can change a government's course is by having something running you can use as an example.
- harryVic 6y ago
  It feels pessimistic to think this way but I agree. Most people don't even save for their own retirement, how can we expect voluntary action to save the climate? Poverty rates among elderly were crazy high before social security was established. Similarly, it will take government action to solve climate change.
thrownaway954 6y ago
this is such a gimmick. the earth can heal itself if we stop polluting it. removal isn't the answer we have to stop producing it.
- jackdeansmith 6y ago
  > the earth can heal itself if we stop polluting it Nope, we're currently moving gigatons of carbon from the geosphere to the atmosphere and a significant amount of that carbon will remain for tens of thousands of years. If we miraculously stop emitting tomorrow, we wont have fixed the problem, we would just stop it from getting worse. Source: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/common-climate-misconceptions-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/common-climate-mi... If we want to return the climate to pre-industrial, we need aggressive emissions cuts to net zero AND massive carbon removal later this century.
WhompingWindows 6y ago
I don't know much about spaceflight, but with SpaceX's rapidly reducing the cost of launching objects into orbit, would it make sense to block some small % of heat/radiation from the sun with mirrors or shades? We could use the LaGrange point or could focus on blocking light hitting the poles, to decelerate ice loss there? I wonder when that cooling would make sense financially and how it would be enacted.
- kyleee 6y ago
  Probably plausible; that's basically what happens with the particulate matter from volcanic activity just on a finer scale i think. On the flip side if we had a big volcanic eruption do we have any way to scrub particulate matter on a large enough scale to prevent catastrophic cooling?
markdown 6y ago
There are some quotes half-way down the page. One of them is from someone called Cabel Sasser. He has the title of Co-Founder, but it doesn't say of what. The company logo is just a P. Anyone have any ideas?
- grzm 6y ago
  Cabel Sasser is a cofounder if Panic. (https://panic.com/ https://panic.com/)
  - markdown 6y ago
    Thanks. Not sure why Stripe thinks that they have a recognisable logo.
hugoromano 6y ago
Climate by Stripe is nonsense. We need action and mindset change, not another fee. Eventually people will be arrested by carbon offsetting fraud, fake projects and ecosystem destruction. Wait for it...
yongjik 6y ago
My chief problem with carbon capture as policy is that it's even less politically viable than carbon tax or any other government subsidies. Carbon capture doesn't generate money in itself. You have to pay someone to do this, and since it's more expensive to capture CO2 than not emitting it in the first place, someone has to pay more money than, say, reducing US fossil fuel usage by 10%, to achieve the same CO2 reduction. We can't even muster enough political willpower to shut down coal plants. Imagine going to these same people and saying "Good news, you can keep your coal plants, we will just tax you more than how much it would cost to shut them down!"
- genidoi 6y ago
  Is the state of carbon capture tech like where transistors were in 1950, or has it already reached the physical limit and the only gains to be made are through better/cheaper/cleaner energy sources to power carbon capture?
  - jackdeansmith 6y ago
    Somewhere in the middle I'd guess, I'd say more like photovoltaics about ten years ago. There's still a lot of room for improving efficiency and manufacturing cheap hardware.
- jackdeansmith 6y ago
  Even one we reach net-zero emissions (which I agree, is proving to be an incredibly hard task politically) we still have the problem of a century of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Getting our climate back to pre-industrial is going to require carbon capture ramping up dramatically later this century. These projects will only make sense to operate at truly large scale once we've already shut down all the coal plants. I think what stripe is trying to do here is make early investments so that when we really need it to scale, the costs are low and the tech is mature.
- ohazi 6y ago
  > Imagine going to these same people and saying "Good news, you can keep your coal plants, we will just tax you more than how much it would cost to shut them down!" ...thus incentivizing the operator to shut down the plant of their own accord. This was the desired outcome anyway, so what's the problem?
timka 6y ago
I can't believe how easily people have been persuaded that anthropogenic factors play any significant role.

384 points by constantinum 6y ago

This is really cool! Kudos to the team there for doing this!! Semi-shameless plug (it's for the environment!!): We're launching something similar next week here [1]. Instead pulling off revenue we're helping teams plant trees when they close an issue or merge a PR. I think the additional visibility to the team members as they work has a great feel-good vibe! We currently connect with Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab & JIRA. We also give badges to show on your repos. Here is a video to see what it looks like [2]. If you'd like to join the beta please email at parham@cloudsynth.com! [1] https://cloudsynth.com/social-impact/trees https://cloudsynth.com/social-impact/trees [2] https://www.loom.com/share/2ad9a30d13aa4cd78ed98308b0d37283 https://www.loom.com/share/2ad9a30d13aa4cd78ed98308b0d37283

ericvanular 6y ago
Hey parhamn, Cloudsynth looks awesome. If you'd like to connect with a community of climate action oriented people, feel free to post about your work over at https://collective.energy https://collective.energy (I'm the founder). For anyone else who cares about making a positive impact on the planet, come join us as well!
CoffeePython 6y ago
This is pretty awesome! How does pricing work for this?
- parhamn 6y ago
  We're providing this service for free. Your team sets your monthly donation limit and we just handle everything else. 100% goes to #TeamTrees.
tasogare 6y ago
This smptomatic of the green-washing trend. Planting trees by itself is not an action that is inherently good: it is if placed where useful for instance to fight desertification, it can be dommageable in other cases such as planting non native species, or planting moni-cture forest. As usual with this kind of initiative, there is no info on the type of trees planted, where they are and why it does matter to the local environnement. There is no way to verify impact. My comment might be harsh, but most of the releved criticized can be easily addressed with more information.
- aclimatt 6y ago
  You're absolutely right, it can be easily addressed with more information. So perhaps it would have been worth it to get that information first and level a more applicable criticism before posting valueless FUD. https://teamtrees.org/ https://teamtrees.org/
- parhamn 6y ago
  Sure, it's a fair question :) The idea came to me when I saw the popular youtube campaign TeamTrees [1], and wondered how we can achieve a similar throughput on a regular basis. We're still looking for t he best partners forward the money to. We'd love to allocate to any provider we think is going to do the most for the climate. I'm happy to forward they money to Stripe as well if they have better strategies for this. It seems fine to forward it to the team that Mark Robber and Mr. Beast put together (assuming they have done proper due diligence given Elon & Tobi have donated 1m respectively), until we find better strategies. [1] https://teamtrees.org/ https://teamtrees.org/
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  What do you think about this option from Project Wren? It looks like the money is going to an established organization (TIST) run with an eye towards everything you said. https://projectwren.com/projects/community-tree-planting https://projectwren.com/projects/community-tree-planting I just found out about Project Wren recently, turns out they are a YC company. I want to pull the trigger on signing up for it but I want to be really sure what I'm donating towards is actually effective.
- garth5689 6y ago
  If anyone wants some evidence supporting this comment's overall idea, here's an applicable podcast episode to provide some examples of when indiscriminately planting trees might have unintended consequences: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/for-the-love-of-peat/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/for-the-love-of-peat/

dinkleberg 6y ago

It’s always great to see things like this that remove the barrier to doing some good. Stripe has a huge user base, so it’ll be interesting to see how much impact this is able to make.

paws 6y ago

ICYMI there's a public repo that has more details (and answered several of my questions in one convenient place) https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-materials/ https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-material... Nice to see the transparency on this.

makerofspoons 6y ago

This is excellent and a great option for responsible users! We should not get distracted from the reality however that to really move the needle we need universal carbon pricing.

evanlivingston 6y ago
And to stop consuming so many goods!
- FooHentai 6y ago
  And to stop doubling our population every 30 years.

corentin88 6y ago

Kudos to Stripe and the team behind for this proposal. Unfortunately, it's only available for US companies. Hope they will expand it soon.

nanr 6y ago
Yes, we’re starting with U.S. businesses at first and working to quickly expand to more countries. Stay tuned!
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Are you working with Tomorrow ("Tmrow") [1] at all? They're doing something similar with their Bloom Climate [2] product in Europe (their product helps businesses measure their impact and offset accordingly). Also the folks who built and run https://electricitymap.org https://electricitymap.org and who Google is using to schedule compute workloads around low carbon intensity electrical generation [3] [4]. Definitely understand there is a "Faux Pax" (mea culpa) element about mentioning competitors in what looks very similar to a Show HN, but there's a lot of climate work to be done so I hope y'all can connect if you haven't yet. [1] https://www.tmrow.com/ https://www.tmrow.com/ [2] https://bloomclimate.com https://bloomclimate.com [3] https://www.tmrow.com/blog/announcing-our-partnership-with-google/ https://www.tmrow.com/blog/announcing-our-partnership-with-g... [4] https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/data-centers-work-harder-sun-shines-wind-blows https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/data-center... Disclosure: No relation except as a volunteer contributor.

PaulHoule 6y ago

I like it that they are attempting at least four different schemes. There is a lot of risk in some schemes, for instance it is easy to say you left some trees standing but it is not easy to know somebody won't cut them in five years. For instance, it will be hard to prove that the Vesta scheme works. Putting all the money in the lowest cost strategy would be likely to fail. If you spread it out probably some will succeed and others will fail.,

faitswulff 6y ago
What are the other 3 schemes?
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  Scroll down on the page, they have a list of partners at the bottom who are doing very different things, but none of them are doing the traditional "inject CO2 into a saline aquifer" solution which can be attached to biofuel combustion or fermentation.
  - faitswulff 6y ago
    Ah, I thought you meant schemes other than Stripe Climate.

sritchie 6y ago

If anyone from Stripe is reading - is it possible yet for me to simply donate money to the portfolio you’ve assembled without running a business? We purchase monthly offsets now and I’d love to switch to funding direct carbon capture (and will happily spend more).

nanr 6y ago
Hi, Nan from Stripe! Accepting direct contributions from individuals isn’t a central focus for us right now, but we intend to publish what we learn about carbon removal, which can help inform your own efforts. Some of our partners accept contributions directly: https://www.climeworks.com/subscriptions https://www.climeworks.com/subscriptions, https://projectvesta.org/crowdfunding/ https://projectvesta.org/crowdfunding/
- FooHentai 6y ago
  Climeworks? That's not great news IMO. They recently pivoted to soliciting direct investments from the public, and their previous business model was to pipe CO2 into greenhouses to make lettuce grow faster or to sell it to soda bottling plants. Wish I was joking. But if the tech has promise who cares right? Well... Climeworks first demo site had (as of ~2017) the potential to remove 900 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere per year. Over one million of these facilities, ignoring the carbon cost to create them, would be needed to remove just 5% of annual CO2 released. It looks like, as of their last press release, they have 14 sites now, with another one planned that will remove 4000 tonnes of carbon per year. Right now on this trajectory, what they are doing is not showing promise of scaling to the extent needed. Vesta on the other hand has more yet to shake out before we can fairly assess their potential. With trial sites now well underway, I eagerly await their findings.
shinryuu 6y ago
Nori.com might interest you they work with carbon removal as well.
deanclatworthy 6y ago
If you want to do this, try compensate.com

atilev 6y ago

Great initiative, though why not use those funds to also sustain forests and natural carbon capturing methods in the tropical regions? Use those funds, so that jobs can be created where forests are getting cut down for agriculture use? We could preserve our natural carbon capturing biosphere as well as invest in carbon capture technology. There will be little incentive to preserve biosphere lands.

core-questions 6y ago
Agreed, this seems like a more immediately effective vector, on multiple fronts. Let's face it: this 1% transaction fee is going to mostly go into the hands of administrators, bureaucratic types, functionaries, middlemen, and grifters who have gotten themselves into the right place at the right time to proselytize a bunch of catabolic techniques to "capture carbon" that use more energy to capture carbon than was produced by releasing that same amount of carbon. It makes virtually zero sense.

BlueTemplar 6y ago

The history of the carbon removal companies is not good (mostly due to the large incentive to game the measures), and smells of indulgences. However, this industry is still quite young... EDIT : Also this initiative seems to be very research-focused, rather than be just about using already known methods?

core-questions 6y ago
It remains to be seen if carbon removal can be done in a way that makes sense thermodynamically (i.e. it takes tremendous energy input to do, where does that energy come from, is it using carbon-emitting energy from elsewhere on the grid, etc). If at any point a carbon-emitting energy source is involved, there's no way that the system is going to be absorbing as much carbon from the air as was emitted for the same amount of energy. If we're going to flatten the peaks of power availability with anything, it should probably be novel energy storage techniques so that the carbon that is output is not wasted, so the energy is actually used eventually for something productive. We already have a carbon removal system that is viciously efficient and solar powered: it's called a plant.
- theptip 6y ago
  Enhanced Rock Weathering was discussed recently[1], and that is cost effective at something like $100/ton. I don’t think there is any question about whether it’s thermodynamically possible (trees do it, as you say), it’s more whether it’s economically possible; without a carbon tax there is no real incentive for most producers to offset. (If we are relying on demand from “ethical consumers” I don’t think we are going to shift things very far.) 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/spreading-rock-dust-on-fields-could-remove-vast-amounts-of-co2-from-air https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/spreadin...
- coldpie 6y ago
  You're right that energy costs need to be accounted for when examining a potential capture method. But this is so blindingly obvious that of course the researchers are doing it. It is always accounted for when they are making their claims. As a single example see this recent article[1]: > A simple chemical model estimated the rate of weathering for the crushed rock based on the local soil conditions. They also calculated energy requirements based on distance from likely rock sources, as well as accounting for the energy mix available to run everything. (The more fossil fuel burned to carry out the work, the less CO2 removed from the atmosphere in the final accounting.) If it was true that any carbon capture method that uses energy will emit more carbon that it captures, then the researchers wouldn't have bothered doing the research. Yet they have, and do. Carbon capture is a very good avenue of research for mitigating climate change in the near term as we transition to new power sources. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/spreading-rock-dust-on-farms-could-be-a-major-climate-action/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/spreading-rock-dust-...

glintik 6y ago

Stripe, what’s wrong with you? Climate, are you serious? If your developers have some free time - please fix UI bugs in dashboard.

mrwnmonm 6y ago
What the hell? They are trying to do something good, and that is your response? AND THEY ARE ONE OF THE BEST DESIGNERS IN THE WORLD

asien 6y ago

This is a great initiative depending on where the money goes, but fundamentally the race to solve global emission is doomed to fail. European countries like Sweden or Iceland have low footprint because of the population lifestyle and the energy coming from abundant renewable source. If the fund go through « iterative » innovation I don’t see how this is supposed to solve anything ? There is countless studies on those topics.

thiago_fm 6y ago
Based on what you said, there are two ways to strike the problem: 1. "population lifestyle": consumers must change their habits and companies must change their products/factries to reduce footprint 2. "energy coming from abundant renewable source": invest in renewable energy sources Both of them need funding. Stripe is requesting funding for this. How is this not helping? "There's countless studies on those topics." isn't anywhere an argument.

syndacks 6y ago

I take serious moral concern with the notion that we can "spend our way out of climate disaster" as these initiatives ultimately suggest. Furthermore, this makes individuals feel better about doing something (having agency). This is a false sense of making a difference; we need sweeping, fundamental changes to address climate change, not at the individual level, but at the state level and beyond.

coldpie 6y ago
> we need sweeping, fundamental changes to address climate change, not at the individual level, but at the state level and beyond. If that isn't happening, what's your next suggestion?
thinkharderdev 6y ago
Those aren't mutually exclusive though. Even in the most optimistic decarbonization scenarios we would still need to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere to avoid >2 degrees of warming.
feoren 6y ago
Do you think the existence of these small efforts makes the larger efforts harder or easier? More or less likely?
- evanlivingston 6y ago
  My personal belief is that the larger effort looks a lot like early COVID lockdowns. We more or less did exactly what we need to do: Driving only when absolutely necessary, only purchasing exactly what was necessary, furloughing most industry, turning the lights off at the local big box stores, grocery stores only open 10-5, etc... To me, these smaller efforts feel like they distract from the more grim reality that our behavior needs to drastically change.
seymore_12 6y ago
The term for this is "moral licensing". It is dangerous path i.e. I jogged 30 mins, I can have this Snickers bar now...

gazelleeatslion 6y ago

WOAH - That logo looks 100% identical to scotch.io. Even the animation... Not suggesting anything but wow what the odds. Great program. Not enough organizations / people prioritizing climate and always great to see efforts by a business. Also, FWIW “Carbon Capture” is a weird space and a bunch of young crazy tech worth looking into for engineer minded folks (direct air capture for example). Lot of love, hate, skepticism from people, industry, scientist, activist, NGO, legislators but regardless offsets markets (even a global one) or cutting back is definitely not enough we need to do.

gazelleeatslion 6y ago
For the downvotes: https://scotch.io/tutorials/building-the-new-scotchio-animated-svg-logo https://scotch.io/tutorials/building-the-new-scotchio-animat...

googthrowaway42 6y ago

"In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence (Latin: indulgentia, from indulgeō, 'permit') is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins".[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and all of the saints".[2]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

theptip 6y ago
Unlike sin, CO2 is fungible; if you put it in here and take it out there, the net really is zero.
jackdeansmith 6y ago
If sin were a global problem where the total amount of sin in the world caused suffering, and indulgences actually reduced the total amount of sin in the world, the system of indulgences would make perfect sense.

gravitystorm 6y ago

Carbon capture is necessary in the long term, for particular emissions that are hard to avoid (like specific industrial processes and parts of agriculture). But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity, then the money being spent on carbon capture is being spent terribly ineffectively. And globally, we don't have the time or money to waste. For example, most electricity grids are still partially carbon-intensive, despite renewable sources being cheap and available and in use. Simply buying some more solar panels and hooking them to a carbon-intensive grid will displace coal or gas emissions by the following lunchtime, far more cost-effectively than any form of carbon capture. I understand the principle on working on research projects that have a long lead time. But Stripe should treat carbon capture as such, and could have a more cost-efficient climate strategy: put most of this money today into the most cost-efficient solutions available today, rather than putting its entire budget into the least cost-efficient solution.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MuffinFlavored 6y ago
> But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity Coal and gas fired electricity can be easily and cheaply displaced today? Then why isn't it? I was under the impression that we needed coal + gas still because it wasn't easy or cheap to meet the energy level needs of today with alternatives.
- mperham 6y ago
  The price of wind and solar is coming down so fast that what didn't work in 2015 is perfectly feasible in 2020. My town's sustainability plan was developed in 2014, passed in 2020 and it's already obsolete. Many organizations are planning today based on data that is already out of date.
- DennisP 6y ago
  Well, it can easily be displaced at low market penetration for wind/solar. At high levels, like well over 50%, storage cost starts to be a serious issue.

immmmmm 6y ago

Removing carbon from the atmosphere is a fight against the second law of thermodynamic. To win a fight against Entropy one needs energy, and typically a lot of. My question is simple: where do we find enough energy to capture the carbon that was emitted during the 200 last years? Because we consume already too much energy i fear..

politician 6y ago
Uranium?
coldpie 6y ago
Wind, solar, tidal energy. Your question is like number zero on the list of carbon sequestration questions, obviously they have thought about that problem.
- baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  They have thought about it but not solved it. We haven’t solved our current energy needs, or anywhere even close to that with renewable, clean energy. We don’t know how to scale it so that > 50% of grid power can be from intermittent renewables. So power large scale carbon sequestration is still an unsolved problem.
JshWright 6y ago
And until we're fully transitioned to carbon neutral energy, isn't that energy better spent replacing CO2 emitting energy sources?
- coldpie 6y ago
  Who do I give 1% of my profits to to replace a nearby coal plant?
valw 6y ago
The crazy thing about it, I think, is that removing CO2 from the atmosphere rather than where it's readily concentrated like power and cement plants, is picking the worse amount of entropy to fight.

tima101 6y ago

Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Simply fund reforestation efforts. Plus many wildlife species will be saved from extinction. For example, orangutans in forests of Borneo island. EDIT And besides, humans will survive climate change, we are 7.8 billion. But we made 1000s of species go extinct. So I say carbon capture is the wrong problem to solve.

bpicolo 6y ago
This is exactly the sort of effort that this revenue redirection goes to. You can see their applicants: https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-materials/tree/master/Project%20Applications https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-material... Droneseed, for example, is directly applicable
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Trees haven’t been carbon sinks for hundreds of millions of years [1]. They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay. Short of planting and burying gigatonnes of forest, trees aren’t going to be our way out of this. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  What about trees used as building material?
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    Extends the period during which some carbon is sequestered but still ultimately returns to the atmosphere - Typical wood building construction periods are in the order of 50 years expected lifespan. That's with treated woods too, which introduce issues with environmental contamination from their treatment methods. Untreated lumber construction is more in the order of 10 years useful building life and another 10 years (guesstimate) breakdown period.

alien1993 6y ago

Yet another way to feel like you're doing something while doing absolutely nothing, or maybe even worse. Keep it up people!

dubcanada 6y ago
I mean donating money to CarbFix for example is not exactly doing nothing?
joshmanders 6y ago
Giving money is doing something.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Giving money is making yourself feel good. Whether that actually achieves anything is another question altogether. But giving money to achieve something is difficult because you need to invest time and effort to investigate where to give and to whom.
lolsal 6y ago
Not every thing we do has to solve every problem immediately and entirely. Incremental progress is good.
valw 6y ago
As should be known in a community of programmers, it's misguided to blame tools from their potential abuses. Every single tool for the ecological transition can be misused for green-washing, from solar panels to electric cars to carbon taxes. Let's welcome and improve the tools, while keeping an eye on how people use them.

akhilcacharya 6y ago

This is legitimately strange. Between this and their magazine, what does this have to do with payment processing?

dubcanada 6y ago
It's a company, companies are allowed to do something besides their core focus.
frakkingcylons 6y ago
What’s strange about it? I’d not be surprised if some sizable fraction of Stripe customers wanted to help reduce the effects of climate change.
kisamoto 6y ago
I would say it's more a corporate (arguably moral) obligation to help transition to a more sustainable society in balance with the natural world.

sudhirj 6y ago

@orbuch can we get an API to set the percentage for each purchase programmatically? or at least vary it by country? I’d like to increase prices and the percentage for customers from countries who don’t do a good job handing climate change.

orbuch 6y ago
Thanks for the suggestion! You can set the percentage with just a few clicks in the Dashboard right now. We’re exploring what the right API experience might look like for Stripe Climate in future.

redwoolf 6y ago

While things like this are valuable, it still places the onus on consumers to change their behavior to combat climate change. Not until large polluters are charged for their carbon production, or are compelled to contribute to carbon removal will this have a net benefit. This is conscience-friendly capitalism at best.

jl2718 6y ago

Sorry, but this feel-goodism around carbon capture doesn’t work. They paid $775/ton. Coal is $30/ton. Those are not carbon-free facilities and salaries. Capture requires energy that could be used to reduce carbon emissions demand. 2nd law of thermodynamics says you can’t win this game. The best carbon capture technology is plants and plankton. The best carbon strategy is to use less. Buying offsets feels like penitential indulgences.

tkzed49 6y ago
The linked article specifically explains that this does not involve the traditional practice of purchasing offsets and is focused on research.
- sampo 6y ago
  > is focused on research So while their punchline is "Remove carbon as you grow your business", when you read the fine print, they don't even promise to remove any carbon? At least the fine print is honest.
  - jl2718 6y ago
    Well let's look at these projects: https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases {Climeworks: startup, Project Vesta: non-profit, CarbonCure: startup, Charm: startup} Smells like an investor scheme to pump revenues. "Honest" fine print would disclose any and all financial interest in these startups by Stripe corporate officers.
ishjoh 6y ago
My optimism for carbon capture is because it allows a politics free Arbitrage opportunity. Generating hydro electric power in Canada to capture CO2 is a real opportunity, and yes today it is far too expensive, but as more research is done technology is improved those prices will come down. My pessimism for a political solution hinges on the fact that the leading CO2 producers in the world are unlikely to agree on drastic CO2 cuts: China: 28% USA: 15% India: 7% Russia: 5% https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi...

chrismorgan 6y ago

Meanwhile, this page has a pointless colourful simulation/animation going on that immediately makes my laptop’s fan speed up as it makes the CPU consume another few watts, and makes scrolling janky too.

abalone 6y ago

The only realistic solution to carbon removal is massive government investment, like most other major Silicon Valley core technologies. We need the Green New Deal. Anything less is posturing. I would even go so far as to say that on an issue of this importance, where we have maybe a decade left to turn the tide, giving the impression that private enterprise can solve it is irresponsible. Put those donations into GND activism — it’s a political problem.

antr 6y ago
I'm an energy investor (primarily focused on renewables), and I couldn't disagree more. I could go on an on with examples of how government intervention has created busts across the renewables space for the past 20 years, and has thrown down the drain billions of tax payer money. I'd like to keep governments out of something that works without them.
- defterGoose 6y ago
  It almost certainly doesnt though, and your personal experience over the last two decades or whatever probably means squat. If the US government is/was capable of succeeding with the Manhattan and Apollo projects, there's no reason to believe that the same wouldn't be true of similar gargantuan efforts today. I'm not saying that the US can solve AGCC by itself, but I am saying that uncoordinated efforts by loosely coupled private entities cannot.
  - gwright 6y ago
    > It almost certainly doesnt though, and your personal experience over the last two decades or whatever probably means squat. We all know that an anecdote is not data, but being so dismissive towards someone with specific industry knowledge seems inappropriate.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      FWIW, the grandparent's industry specific knowledge is in investment into developing renewable energy companies. This isn't very applicable to the article or problem at hand.

markkat 6y ago

Why not direct the money to the planting of trees?

MrDresden 6y ago
We won't fix this climate catastrophe by placing all of the eggs in one basket.
- markkat 6y ago
  I agree.
jackdeansmith 6y ago
Trees eventually rot or burn, carbon stored in the biosphere can be a useful "capacitor" for reducing atmospheric carbon, but in the long run we really need to put it back in the geosphere where we got it from.
- markkat 6y ago
  Rotting trees (and the leaves they drop) add carbon to the ground, creating organic soil.

say_it_as_it_is 6y ago

If Stripe were to go ahead and take a few pennies off of its own cut, I'd be OK with that.

graeme 6y ago

Would this or any portion of this be considered a business deduction? Eg a marketing expense where you can show social responsibility for prospective customers?

nanr 6y ago
Nan from Stripe's Climate team here! You might be able to deduct it as a business expense, but you’ll want to talk to your tax advisor first. We have a little more on this in our FAQ: https://stripe.com/docs/climate/faqs https://stripe.com/docs/climate/faqs

e_commerce 6y ago

Please reduce fees. We don't need a zillion PR initiatives. Reduce fees.

el_nahual 6y ago

Quick reminder that carbon removal is a necessary but secondary step. We need to stop pumping more carbon into the air faster than we need to stop taking it out, simply because it takes more energy to get carbon out of the air than the energy that carbon was used for in the first place. To use a financial analogy: We have a high-interest credit card. That debt has compounding interest rates, and the interest rate is accelerating because of positive feedback loops. A "carbon removal" strategy is basically like putting X dollars on our accelerating-rate credit card in order to invest X in a fund with a lower interest rate than the card itself. Obviously this will result in spiraling debt. The ONLY solution is to take carbon spending to ~0 and only then focus on removing it from the air.

colincooke 6y ago
While ideal, this isn't very realistic. Likelier is that we will slowly get off carbon intensive energy sources and production mechanisms, but fail to move off them entirely for a long period. In this period it is essential that we invest in the technology required to stablize our climate, i.e. carbon capture. With the proper clean energy generation capacity these systems can exist in harmony. Where carbon capture buys us more time to get more people on board with cleaner mechanisms. In addition, as this page points out, sustained investment is essential to technological development. By pushing down the cost of capture we allow for new economic opportunities, which provide both incentives (carbon tax for example) and direct benefits (using that tax income for capture).
- el_nahual 6y ago
  I agree it's not realistic, but it's actually more realistic than the alternative. The key here is that every new emission today multiplies because of positive feedback. So every day that passes, the problem of scrubbing enough carbon actually becomes harder--whereas the problem of simply not putting it out there keeps the same magnitude. Put differently, it costs "one less airplane trip" to prevent the carbon associated with 1 flight out of the air, but it costs an increasing amount of trips to get it out. Lastly... we know how to keep carbon out of the air. It's a politically difficult problem but one with a known solution. Just stop doing things. And stop doing them by taxing them to oblivion.... whereas we don't actually know how to get carbon out of the air in a clean way with sufficient magnitude in order to prevent runaway growth. And it goes without saying that in that scenario we'd probably have to reduce emissions as well! The argument that reducing emissions to ~0 is unrealistic is true, but it's more realistic than the alternative.

valw 6y ago

I'm surprised to not see these investments directed towards the voluntary carbon market, in which projects such as those REDD+ certified achieve more than 10X higher efficiency, with significant co-benefits in biodiversity and support to the local communities (here's an example I give often: https://standfortrees.org/ https://standfortrees.org/). It looks like the projects were chosen through the biases of Silicon Valley, chosen to be futuristic and technologically impressive rather than impactful. Carbon credits markets sometimes have a bad press due to the abuses in carbon offsetting approaches, but since the approach here is voluntary action rather than offsetting, I see no reason not to use them. What seems more sensible to you, financing Western entrepreneurs at $100/tCO2e, or financing nature preservation, energy transition and poverty alleviation in developing countries at $10/tCO2e? Thanks Stripe, but I'll keep buying carbon credits.

kisamoto 6y ago
There is a distinction between carbon credits and negative emissions. I wouldn't say these projects are bias towards silicon valley style there is simply a growing acceptance that nature based solutions - whole undeniably important and essential - are simply not enough. They are cheap but slow. Trees can be wiped out with wild-fires releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere. Negative emissions technologies such as bio-oil, direct air capture and storage, olivine and biochar, are developing to help support nature based solutions and remove quickly. While expensive at the moment I believe they will become cheaper as the technologies and processes mature and the economies of scale kick in. I don't say this to convert you - nature is a great way to help combat the climate crisis - however do not dismiss this essential step for our future.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Any studies you can cite to support your beliefs you're sharing here?
  - jackdeansmith 6y ago
    As far as nature based solutions go, this study on the potential for afforestation is a good place to start: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14887/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14887/. Simply put, there isn't enough land to plant enough trees to get us out of this mess. That doesn't mean that planting trees isn't useful, I think the paper makes a good case for why it's cost effective and buys time, but it isn't enough alone. My personal take is that the cheap carbon credits are indeed a more cost effective use of money right now, but it's low hanging fruit that we will run out of soon.

gist 6y ago

Call it what it is an attempt to pull at the heart strings of customers by associating with the cause of the year. (Similar to companies putting 'fight cancer' ribbons on their products). What I want is a company to focus on giving me a good experience and helping me when there is a problem that's what matters to me. Not 'we are part of the solutions to societies ills' theater.

dangrossman 6y ago

Does anyone else remember when Hacker News had a badge at the bottom of each page for "CO2Stats Green Certification"? Would've been around 2009.

marvin 6y ago

Is there anywhere I can credibly pay any reasonable amount of money to offset my CO2 emissions? I would be willing to pay a monthly salary for this, if the effect can be demonstrated to be sustainable and permanent. I've been wondering how the various companies that have CO2 offset programs do it; whether it's credible or not.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
One is tempted to advise, lower your carbon footprint to start with! But its hard to figure out how. Most of the public infrastructure we use to survive is beyond our control. Drive or take the bus? Which is better? Or walk, but the extra food you consume is a worse contributor to your footprint! So remain a couch potato and work from home. But illness, depression and early decrepitude cost society too, which has its impact on CO2 footprint...
- marvin 6y ago
  Can't reduce them to zero. CO2 capture and sequestering, or the same effect through other means that don't have externalities, is required to go CO2 neutral on a personal level.
jdlshore 6y ago
The Nature Conservancy has a carbon offset program that I use. They're credible. The money goes towards purchasing and managing land for forests and net carbon removal. It's surprisingly cheap. They seem to have changed their site, though, and I can no longer find the page that allowed a direct carbon offset donation. Also, here in Oregon, you can pay the electric company a small fee (for me, about $11-12 a month) to guarantee that your electricity use is 100% offset by carbon-neutral generation (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear). Also in Oregon, you can pay the natural gas company a fee (for me, $5.50 per month) to offset your natural gas usage with "bio digesters." I'm more skeptical about their efficacy.
jackdeansmith 6y ago
It depends on what you mean by offset. If you're okay with carbon stored in the biosphere by trees then there are plenty of programs. If you want to put carbon back in the geosphere (since trees eventually rot or burn) sending money to climeworks is the best thing available right now. Their DAC + geologic storage approach is expensive at around $1k/ton, but highly credible.

spditner 6y ago

I am curious to know what the business case looked like to get "climate" added as a feature to the product roadmap in a for-profit company.

cultus 6y ago
Corporate green-washing initiatives like this just make our economic system look good, while doing no meaningful good. These corporations have political power, but they don't use it to solve this crisis.

tabbott 6y ago

I don't think it's possible for this sort of individual, opt-in action to be material to the climate problem; problems at this scale can only be solved by government action. If Stripe raises $30M/year from this program, it'd be like 10000x too little to be significant to our carbon problem. (Maybe it could have some minor R&D acceleration impact for the carbon removal techniques they're looking at). The root cause of our climate problem is the fossil fuel industry having successfully manipulated the government and public to prevent real action on climate change, for decades. The Drilled podcast is a good resource for primary source material on how oil companies systematically manufactured climate change denial. I would prefer that Stripe allocate the funds to groups working to counter the fossil fuel industry's misinformation strategy. $30M/year would be a significant budget for that sort of work.

marcosdumay 6y ago
If Stripe raises $30M/year for this program, there will be $30M/year spent on validation and R&D that one can point to and say "look, that can be done and works". I agree that governments should be making large grants for research in renewables and capture everywhere, and tax fossil fuels enough to make them uncompetitive. But they aren't, and part of the way you can change a government's course is by having something running you can use as an example.
harryVic 6y ago
It feels pessimistic to think this way but I agree. Most people don't even save for their own retirement, how can we expect voluntary action to save the climate? Poverty rates among elderly were crazy high before social security was established. Similarly, it will take government action to solve climate change.

thrownaway954 6y ago

this is such a gimmick. the earth can heal itself if we stop polluting it. removal isn't the answer we have to stop producing it.

jackdeansmith 6y ago
> the earth can heal itself if we stop polluting it Nope, we're currently moving gigatons of carbon from the geosphere to the atmosphere and a significant amount of that carbon will remain for tens of thousands of years. If we miraculously stop emitting tomorrow, we wont have fixed the problem, we would just stop it from getting worse. Source: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/common-climate-misconceptions-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/common-climate-mi... If we want to return the climate to pre-industrial, we need aggressive emissions cuts to net zero AND massive carbon removal later this century.

WhompingWindows 6y ago

I don't know much about spaceflight, but with SpaceX's rapidly reducing the cost of launching objects into orbit, would it make sense to block some small % of heat/radiation from the sun with mirrors or shades? We could use the LaGrange point or could focus on blocking light hitting the poles, to decelerate ice loss there? I wonder when that cooling would make sense financially and how it would be enacted.

kyleee 6y ago
Probably plausible; that's basically what happens with the particulate matter from volcanic activity just on a finer scale i think. On the flip side if we had a big volcanic eruption do we have any way to scrub particulate matter on a large enough scale to prevent catastrophic cooling?

markdown 6y ago

There are some quotes half-way down the page. One of them is from someone called Cabel Sasser. He has the title of Co-Founder, but it doesn't say of what. The company logo is just a P. Anyone have any ideas?

grzm 6y ago
Cabel Sasser is a cofounder if Panic. (https://panic.com/ https://panic.com/)
- markdown 6y ago
  Thanks. Not sure why Stripe thinks that they have a recognisable logo.

hugoromano 6y ago

Climate by Stripe is nonsense. We need action and mindset change, not another fee. Eventually people will be arrested by carbon offsetting fraud, fake projects and ecosystem destruction. Wait for it...

yongjik 6y ago

My chief problem with carbon capture as policy is that it's even less politically viable than carbon tax or any other government subsidies. Carbon capture doesn't generate money in itself. You have to pay someone to do this, and since it's more expensive to capture CO2 than not emitting it in the first place, someone has to pay more money than, say, reducing US fossil fuel usage by 10%, to achieve the same CO2 reduction. We can't even muster enough political willpower to shut down coal plants. Imagine going to these same people and saying "Good news, you can keep your coal plants, we will just tax you more than how much it would cost to shut them down!"

genidoi 6y ago
Is the state of carbon capture tech like where transistors were in 1950, or has it already reached the physical limit and the only gains to be made are through better/cheaper/cleaner energy sources to power carbon capture?
- jackdeansmith 6y ago
  Somewhere in the middle I'd guess, I'd say more like photovoltaics about ten years ago. There's still a lot of room for improving efficiency and manufacturing cheap hardware.
jackdeansmith 6y ago
Even one we reach net-zero emissions (which I agree, is proving to be an incredibly hard task politically) we still have the problem of a century of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Getting our climate back to pre-industrial is going to require carbon capture ramping up dramatically later this century. These projects will only make sense to operate at truly large scale once we've already shut down all the coal plants. I think what stripe is trying to do here is make early investments so that when we really need it to scale, the costs are low and the tech is mature.
ohazi 6y ago
> Imagine going to these same people and saying "Good news, you can keep your coal plants, we will just tax you more than how much it would cost to shut them down!" ...thus incentivizing the operator to shut down the plant of their own accord. This was the desired outcome anyway, so what's the problem?

timka 6y ago

I can't believe how easily people have been persuaded that anthropogenic factors play any significant role.