American Carbon Registry Presents Annual Awards for Outstanding Environmental Achievements

(3BL Media / theCSRfeed) Arlington, VA - March 28, 2011 - On March 16th, American Carbon Registry (ACR), a nonprofit enterprise of Winrock International, hosted its annual dinner in Washington DC. ACR presented awards to three outstanding ACR member companies. As has been the tradition since ACR joined Winrock, awards are based on the ACR guiding principles of excellence, innovation and quality.

Xcel Energy was honored with the ACR Utility Excellence award for its outstanding achievements in reducing its emissions. Xcel Energy has made a public commitment to reducing CO2 emissions 20% below 2005 levels by 2020 and has already reduced 11%, approximately 26 million tons, cumulatively since 2003. The company has been the nation’s No. 1 one wind energy provider for the past six years, is ranked fifth among U.S. utilities for solar capacity, and boasts the largest U.S. voluntary green energy program by customer participation. In addition to implementing an innovative Colorado carbon offset pilot program, Xcel Energy is one of only ten S&P 500 companies listed in the Carbon Disclosure Project’s leadership indexes for progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and excellence in reporting.

"Our mission is to meet the needs of our customers and grow our business through environmental leadership," said Dick Kelly, chairman and CEO of Xcel Energy. "Every day, we work hard to balance customer demands for reliable, affordable energy with our goal to create a clean energy future, and we greatly appreciate the ACR's recognition."

Finite Carbon Corporation was presented with the ACR Innovation award for the development of the world’s first forest carbon risk mitigation product, the Carbon Reduction Guarantee. The product is offered exclusively for U.S. and international forest carbon projects registered on ACR. The guarantee allows companies to fully mitigate unforeseeable environmental risks or “reversals” up-front at a pre-determined cost. As a leading U.S. forest carbon project developer with over two million tons under contract, Finite Carbon identified the need for such a product to remove uncertainty, a key entry barrier to carbon market participation for most landowners.

“We selected American Carbon Registry as a partner for our guarantee product because of their deep domain expertise in forestry and willingness to explore new ideas,” said Scott Nissenbaum, President of Finite Carbon. “We’re very pleased to receive the ACR award and excited that we will soon announce registration of the first project to utilize the Carbon Reduction Guarantee.”
 

Nike received the ACR Commitment to Quality award for the leadership the global brand has demonstrated mitigating its climate impact. Nike has made cutting greenhouse gas emissions across its operations, incorporating sustainability into product design and reducing its overall environmental footprint the cornerstones of its sustainability efforts. In addition to the company’s numerous awards and top environmental sustainability rankings, Nike has led collaborative efforts such as the GreenXchange for companies to openly share intellectual property with the goal of accelerating deployment of sustainable technologies. Nike has also been an early actor in the carbon market. In 2006 Nike completed a decade-long voluntary GHG emission reduction project to replace the gas in the air bags in their athletic shoes, which were originally filled with sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), a greenhouse gas 22,200 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The project reduced millions of tons of CO2, producing carbon offsets, which are registered on ACR. As one of its latest sustainability innovations, Nike is launching the Mata no Peito program, which will use its offsets as the basis of a venture to protect and recover forests throughout Brazil.
 

“Nike is delighted to receive this award from the American Carbon Registry and Winrock who have partnered with us in our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and explore innovative ways to move the needle on climate change beyond our own operations,” said Sarah Severn, stakeholder mobilization director, Nike Sustainable Business and Innovation.
 

American Carbon Registry is proud to work with environmental champions like Xcel Energy, Finite Carbon Corporation and Nike as well as past ACR awardees Blue Source, C2I, Carbonfund.org, Commonwealth Resources Management Corporation, Entergy and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
 

About the American Carbon Registry
The nonprofit American Carbon Registry (ACR), an enterprise of Winrock International, is a leading carbon offset program recognized for its strong standards for environmental integrity. Founded in 1996 as the GHG Registry by Environmental Resources Trust, ACR has 15 years of experience in the development of rigorous, science-based carbon offset standards and methodologies as well as in carbon offset issuance, serialization and transparent online transaction and retirement reporting. As the first private voluntary GHG registry in the world, ACR has set the bar in the global voluntary carbon market for offset quality and operational transparency and continues to lead innovation. www.americancarbonregistry.org

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