Map-collective, the revolutionary carbon mapping platform that visualizes the carbon usage of earth and humanity through one, unified dashboard, announced earlier this year their plans to map carbon across the globe. According to Map-Collective’s CEO, Tara Gupta, California – a center for sustainability and progressive leadership – is Map-Collective’s perfect place to start.
To help launch her company’s initiative in the California region, Gupta has announced a partnership between Map-Collective and 10Power, a carbon negative company based out of San Francisco, as part of Map-Collective’s 2021 Carbon Plan Program. 10Power is a certified Benefit Corporation that is on a mission to provide sources of 100% renewable energy to 100% of humanity with a gender empowerment lens. The partnership has to-date culminated in 10Power including Map-Collective within the carbon-negative company’s 2021 carbon plan, which, according to 10Power, will help companies investigate and understand the data around their carbon footprint to achieve carbon neutrality, and make better decisions about their ongoing interactions with earth systems and resource allocation.
A Collaborative Carbon-Neutral Effort
“We are happy to have certified 10Power under the Carbon Plan Program for 2021,” says Tara Gupta, the founder of Map-Collective. “This company has taken steps to ensure that they are carbon negative, and is going above and beyond to merge their mission with social impact projects and activism that consistently raise the bar. We hope to continue working with them year after year to establish how much of the deficit they are undoing through their negative footprint, and set an example for other energy companies.”
10Power’s most recent project, completed during the pandemic, is a solar-powered water desalination plant, now providing clean drinking water for 35,000 people in La Gonave, Haiti.
Sandra Kwak, the CEO and founder of 10Power, says, “Map-Collective has helped 10Power quantify the positive environmental impact of our renewable energy access projects in Haiti. It’s incredibly important for businesses and organizations working on making the world a better place to measure and track our impact, both to ensure our mission is being realized and to communicate to investors.”
Targeting Net-Zero Carbon by 2050
Carbon neutrality has become an operational goal for many companies to meet, both in the U.S. and abroad, by 2030 in order to be in line with the U.N.’s overarching goal of reaching net-zero global carbon emissions by 2050. Within the U.S., President Biden announced on the first day of his presidential term his plan to rejoin the Paris Agreement and set the U.S. on target to achieve no less than a 50% carbon reduction by 2030.
Using 10Power as an example, this target may be easier to meet considering the impact of Map-Collective’s Carbon Plan Program. Because 10Power was able to achieve carbon negative emissions within their first year in operation (2019), Kwak as the company’s CEO is setting a new precedent for both existing and new organizations to measure their carbon footprint, analyze the data around it, and create initiatives to help other key industry stakeholders do the same. Under Kwak’s leadership, 10Power is on track to be drawing down over 4,000 tons of carbon – more than 1,000 times the company’s annual carbon footprint.
According to Map-Collective, their Carbon Plan Program takes a snapshot of the company acting as their client-partner, looking at all activities required for the client-partner’s business to function and calculate the company’s carbon footprint. This carbon footprint of 2021 is then used to approximate the historical emissions that the client-partner company has emitted since the advent of the company’s founding and operations. Taking a look at the historical and present emissions, Map-Collective then models out the path of the company’s future, in regards to its carbon emission potential, and runs scenarios to set a path for the company to ultimately reach carbon neutrality, mitigating all carbon from the past and current carbon.
“Thus,” Gupta adds, “these mitigation efforts continue into the future, thus drawing down more carbon per year than their fair share; this is called a carbon negative.”
Achieving Goals Through Adherence to Positive Values
Though many may be left wondering as to how 10Power was able to achieve net-zero carbon emissions within only one year of operations, look no further than the culture of compassion and empathy rooted within the company’s values.
Because 10Power’s mission and vision are mutually founded in the belief that their projects can improve the lives of people in developing countries and regions by providing them with sustainable and reliable methods of electricity and drinking water, while simultaneously replacing the need to transport clean drinking water from foreign countries and a reliance on diesel-operated generators, 10Power can avoid producing excess carbon emissions by providing carbon-neutral solutions.
In their partnership with Map-Collective’s Carbon Plan Program, 10Power was found to produce a significantly smaller carbon footprint when compared to competitors, even with the implementation of their projects. Without those implementations, Map-Collective found that 10Power only produced a carbon footprint on par with the amount of carbon emissions that three average Americans produce each year.
“Through our partnership with Map-Collective,” says Kwak, “we’ve found that our efforts to mitigate our carbon emissions are some 1,000 times larger than our carbon footprint.”
Map-Collective is a revolutionary carbon tracking platform, visualizing the carbon usage of earth and humanity through one, unified dashboard. Visit map-collective.com today to sign up for a free demo of Map-Collective’s climate data mapping technology and become a part of our world’s climate emergency.