Recently, Hagerty the classic car insurance behemoth, partnered with a little-known UK carbon offsetter called Chrome Carbon. Apparently, they’re a reforestation company (according to some terrible journalism by Forbes). Sadly they’re not. But we’ll get to that.
Chrome Carbon in a nutshell: Use an online calculator to figure out how much CO2 your classic car produces in a given year. Then it figures out how many trees need to be planted to eliminate those emissions.
You pay the fee and then feel great because “all my emissions were offset by planting XX trees”.
Who is behind Chrome Carbon
Chrome Carbon was formed in 2020, and founded by “modern classic and adventure motorcycle enthusiast” Julien Lescure, as stated on Chrome Carbon’s About page.
But dig a little deeper, and Lescure is an ‘Entrepreneur’ according to his LinkedIn, while his own website says:
I coach leaders, founders and teams to make better decisions and bring to market the products and services their customers really want.
I’ve co-founded 2 startups that have resulted in 2 acquisitions, led award-winning product teams whose work has generated millions of dollars in revenue, and held general and product management positions in start-ups and scale-ups. I am also an investor and advisor to several startups.
So Chrome Carbon has gone from the selfless effort of a passionate car enthusiast who wanted to make the world a better place, to the brainchild of a startup founder “generating millions of dollars in revenue.” Hmmm.
Lescure, 43, is the sole owner/employee of ChromeCarbon LTD, according to Companies House. Their listed address has more than 40 other companies registered to it in Leigh-On-Sea, Essex. A quick glance at their financials shows that he made £10,000 in the first year and £12,000 in the second year.
Donating other people’s money for the good of the environment is a pretty nice little side earner, right?
Sharpening the axe
As Chrome Carbon truthfully states on its website, they take 20% of your personal donation and 30% of your corporate donation and keep it for itself to run Chrome Carbon.
What did they do for that 20-30%?
As far as I can see, they simply act as an intermediary. Sending your funds to either One Tree Planted, The Future Forest Company or Gold Standard.
Even Mr. Lescure doesn’t go out, shovel in hand and a few saplings in the other to plant your trees.
But what really bugs me is that the only real service they offer is a very basic emissions/tree calculator. Well, they’re raising awareness about vintage car emissions, which is a good thing in a way, but taking 20% of your donation in return for a calculator and awareness? Come on.
Offset directly without Chrome Carbon
By all means, offset your carbon footprint. But go straight to those that plant the trees. That way, you’re not giving Chrome Carbon 20-30% of your money for nothing.
For example, if I drive my classic car 1,000 miles a year at 18 MPG (calculator’s default), it equates to 27 trees. This costs me the suggested amount of £27.16 (essentially £1 per tree from the looks of it).
By going direct to One Tree Planted and picking the United Kingdom as one of their project locations, that £27 can actually plant 35 trees as they promise ‘One Dollar. One Tree.’ – this depends on the current exchange rate, of course. That’s eight more trees or 29% extra than if I’d used Chrome Carbon.
Deduct the £5.40 or 20% ‘running costs’ that Chrome Carbon charge from your £27 and 20% more trees to the 27 they would plant is 32. Which is still less than you’d be planting by going the direct route.
Lescure must have some friends in high up places, or be a great salesman to get Hagerty to put their name behind Chrome Carbons’ scheming endeavours. No doubt their profits will soon soar.
The alternative to Chrome Carbon
Because we’re ethical, and believe the coming climate catastrophe shouldn’t be seen as a money-making venture by various ‘carbon offset’ companies – yes, I’m looking at you Carbon Neutral Britain.
So we reverse-engineered the calculator that Chrome Carbon offers Hagerty ECO and came up with our own classic car carbon offsetting scheme – Carwitter ECO.
But, we don’t take a penny of your money.
All we do is offer the calculator and place links to two different tree planting charities – one that Chrome Carbon ‘partner’ with. I use that term incredibly loosely.
It’s simple to use. Just select the type of vehicle you want to offset. Enter a rough idea of your MPG, then select the miles you’re going to cover in a given year.
Once you’ve got the number of trees you need to plant (which is more realistic and much higher than Chrome Carbon suggests). Click the link below and make your donation.
Why planting trees isn’t the answer to climate change
You see, the thing is, carbon offsetting doesn’t actually work. It’s just clever accounting and a way to make you feel all warm and fuzzy while you still go about polluting.
The only true way to make a difference is to drive your classic car less.
That’s without delving into the world of failed tree-planting schemes. I can’t find anything negative regarding One Tree Planted, which is why we’ve decided to link to them with our own calculator. But it would be good to visit one of their UK schemes to see how the little saplings are getting on.
By and large, the money you put towards carbon offsetting, usually just covers the cost to plant the tree. Not the years of care it needs to actually get to the point where it sequesters 22kg of carbon per year.
This is where the mathematics of Chrome Carbons calculations gets even worse.
Chrome Carbon – It doesn’t add up
The European Environment Agency state that a mature tree will suck up around 22kg of CO2 per year. This means that the Chrome Carbon calculator is out by nearly 50%.
If you take the 1285.05 kgs of CO2 produced by driving a classic car 1,000 miles at 18 MPG and divide that by 22kg, you’ll need 58 trees, not the 27 that Chrome Carbon states. That’s a 46.5% difference in the numbers.
We have no idea how Chrome Carbon get to their figures. There’s no explanation. You just have to trust them that they’ve got it right.
Trees also take between 20 and 40 years to mature and take up that amount of carbon. So any trees planted today, could be offsetting your carbon in 20 years’ time. Helpful.
And this is before you look at the biodiversity aspect of tree planting and reforestation. Planting one type of tree in a single area, or in neatly ordered rows does nothing to rewild the landscape.
The BBC cover the subject in a Climate Question podcast episode. You can listen to it here.
The great climate change cash in
It seems there’s no end of clever people who have seen an easy way to make a quick buck by preying on our eco-conscious do-good nature. Which is immoral given that they’re telling us that we’re saving the planet, but we really aren’t.
While raising awareness of CO2 and your carbon footprint is a great thing, Chrome Carbon is simply a way to take 20-30% of your money for making the right choice.
And in our opinion, that’s plain wrong.
