This week Hagerty launched its ‘Enthusiast Carbon Offset’ scheme, aka Hagerty ECO.
The long and short of it is: use an online calculator to work out how much carbon your classic vehicle will produce in a given year. This then tells you how many trees need to be planted to get rid of those emissions.
You pay the fee and then feel wonderful because ‘all my emissions have been offset by planting XX trees this year’.
We’ll get into that statement in a minute, but let’s talk about the philanthropic side of this first.
Who’s behind Hagerty ECO?
So Hagerty clearly doesn’t have their staff in fancy attire going out into the wilderness, shovel in hand, to plant those trees you’ve just paid for. They make no bones about this, and also don’t take any fee for providing this service. But they’re still putting their name to it.
This service is provided by a fairly new (2020) UK-based company called Chrome Carbon, which was set up by Julien Lescure a ‘modern classics enthusiast and adventure motorbike rider’ according to the ‘About page’ on Chrome Carbon.
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 an altruistic endeavour, started up by a passionate automotive enthusiast who wants to better the world, to being the brainchild of a startup founder who has ‘generated millions of dollars in revenue’. Right.
By the looks of Companies House, 43 year old Lescure is the sole owner/staff member of ChromeCarbon LTD. With the company being registered to an address in Leigh-On-Sea, Essex, with over 40 other businesses. And taking a quick look at the accounts filing it seems he made £10k in the first year, and £12k in the second.
Not bad for passing on other peoples money for the good of the environment eh?
Why is this axe being ground?
Well, as Chrome Carbon truthfully state on their website (albeit the other way round), they take 20% of your individual donation and 30% of a business donation and keep that for themselves to run Chrome Carbon.
And what do they do for that 20-30%? As far as I can see, just act as middlemen to pass on your funds to either One Tree Planted, The Future Forest Company or Gold Standard, who are THEIR partners.
Not even Mr Lescure goes out with a spade and some saplings to plant your trees. It just gets subbed out to others.
But what really grinds my gears about this whole thing, is that the only real service they’re providing is a very basic emissions/tree calculator. Ok, they are raising awareness about classic car emissions, and that is a good thing on some level, but taking 20% of your donated money for a calculator and awareness raising, come on.
Offset directly without Hagerty ECO
By all means, offset your carbon, but go directly to One Tree Planted. That way, you aren’t giving Chrome Carbon 20-30% of your offset money.
As an example, I drive my classic car 1,000 miles a year at 18 MPG (default value for the calculator), which equates to 27 trees. This costs me a recommended amount of £27.16 (basically £1 for every tree by the looks of it).
But if I go straight to One Tree Planted and choose the United Kingdom as one of their projects, my £27 can actually plant 35 trees as they pledge ‘One dollar. One tree.’ (at the current exchange rate, obviously). That’s 8 more trees, or 29% more than if I’d have used Hagerty ECO.
20% of what Chrome Carbon take from your £27 is £5.40 and 20% more trees than the 27 they would plant is 32 – which is still less than you could plant by going direct.
Lescure must have some pretty good contacts or be a great salesman, as the boost the Hagerty name will give to Chrome Carbon’s income will no doubt be significant.
The alternative to Hagerty ECO & Chrome Carbon
So don’t use Hagerty ECO or Chrome Carbon. Go directly to One Tree Planted and give them your money instead.
That way it doesn’t line the pockets of an intermediary, and your hard-earned money can actually plant more trees than they promise they will.
Use this calculator here instead + your phone calculator.
Example: 0.55 tonnes is 550kg – just move the leading zero to the end to get your kg figure.
Times that kg number by x2 and you’ll get a figure roughly what Chrome Carbon give.
Divide that by 22 (the amount of CO2 a fully grown tree can capture per year), and voila, that’s how many trees you need to plant with One Tree Planted to offset your motoring for one year.
Did you notice how we didn’t charge you 20% to do that?
Why planting trees isn’t always good
Carbon offsetting is just clever accounting. It’s just a way to make you feel good while you keep on creating pollution.
The only way to make a true impact, is to drive your classic car less.
Let’s not get started about how tree-planting initiatives largely fail anyway. Now I can’t find anything nagative about One Tree Planted specifically. They do seem to be the best or one of the best in the industry, but it would be good to visit one of their older UK schemes to see how successful it has been.
Basically, the funding to plant a tree pretty much covers the cost of the sapling. Not the 50+ years of care that it will need to get to the stage where it will actually sequester carbon at the calculated rate. And this is where the math goes even wonkier for Hagerty ECO and Chrome Carbon…
Hagerty ECO – The math doesn’t add up
According to the European Environment Agency a mature tree will take up about 22 kg of CO2 per year. In that case, the magical calculator by Chrome Carbon is out by nearly 50%.
The 1285.05 Kgs of CO2 I produce driving my classic 1,000 miles at 18 MPG means it would take 58 trees, not the 27 claimed if we use that EEA figure. 1285 kgs of carbon, divided by 22kg per tree, per year, equals 58.4. A 46.5% difference.
Hagerty seems to mention that a mature tree produces 180 kgs of O2 per year. I don’t see how this is relevant in the Chrome Carbon calculations, as we’re primarily talking about the sequestering of CO2 from vehicles, not oxygen production. This is also 180 kgs per MATURE tree a year. Trees can mature anywhere from 10 to 40 years from when they are planted. Which also nullifies that stat.
Likewise, the Hagerty ECO calculator seems at odds to Comcar, FleetWorld, Don Bur and Carbon Footprint Calculator. Enter 1,000 miles at 18 MPG in any of those and the figure of CO2 emitted is around 550 to 664 kg, yet use the ‘Modern car’ setting with Chrome Carbon, and it comes out at 1285.05 kg, the same as if you select ‘Classic car’.
There aren’t any ‘workings out’ provided of how Chrome Carbon reach their figures either, so who knows. Pick a number.
This is all before you get into the biodiversity aspect, which shows that reforestation can go wrong by planting all of the same tree types in one area, or by planting them in neatly ordered rows which is totally unnatural.
There’s a really good BBC Climate Question podcast that delves into the dark side of tree-planting initiatives, have a listen here.
Cashing in on the climate disaster
There are numerous clever people out there who have started companies to cash in on our eco-conscious desires, which is clearly morally wrong given what they suggest they’re trying to do for us and the planet. While raising awareness on certain topics, like vehicle emissions, is a great thing to do, it does seems odd that Hagerty would put their name to such a scheme given that it’s not really a business at all.
Could Hagerty not have partnered with One Tree Planted or another provider directly?
We’ve shown how easy it is to calculate kgs of CO2 based on emissions. A freelance web dev could have worked up a similar calculator in no time. Maybe they could even show how they came to that figure. Who knows?
Currently, the Hagerty heft is behind a company that makes 20-30% from every offset.
To us, that’s just wrong.
