Building your climate action plan with Joro 🌳
Plus all you need to know about carbon offsets
Greetings all,
This week we are delighted to feature an interview with Joro founder & CEO Sanchali Pal. Joro, which recently announced its seed round led by Sequoia, is a tool to help consumers take control of their carbon footprint through simple, effective climate action. To complement the interview, we provide a short overview of carbon offsets.
By the end of this newsletter, you will know:
How Joro can help you take control of your climate action plan
How Joro dynamically computes your carbon footprint
What a carbon offset is and how it works
The different types of offsets
Where to buy impactful offsets
Thanks for reading! 🎄
Building your climate action plan with Joro 🌳
An interview with Joro founder & CEO Sanchali Pal
What is Joro?
Joro helps people focus on effective climate action. We're a tool that allows anyone to see their impact on the planet based on how they spend money and understand how they can reduce emissions within their control. That includes changing behavior, purchasing offsets, learning, and connecting with other people to reduce emissions through our consumer choices.
What problem is Joro trying to solve?
I started working on Joro because I felt mounting anxiety about the climate crisis. I knew about it before, but I had never internalized just how bad things are until a couple of years ago. Around the time of the IPCC report, it started to become stark—we have only ten years to draw down emissions.
For a long time, I wondered, how do I align my lifestyle with my values? Many different things go into that, but how do I walk the walk when it comes to being the type of person I want to be and living the kind of life I want to contribute to the world? I became anxious about the climate and started asking questions like: How are my choices influencing the planet? How can I use whatever influence I have for good? Trying to answer that question is complicated. Once you start looking into it, there are so many things. Energy is embedded in everything we do in our lives, from how we eat to what we buy, how we power our homes, and how we travel. There are so many elements to it. It was a very overwhelming question to think about the emissions within my control and what I can do about it.
That’s why I started building Joro. Initially, I created a basic Excel spreadsheet that, over time, became more complicated. Eventually, I realized there needs to be an app that makes this easier. I also realized that your spending is a pretty good proxy for your carbon footprint. That's how we do national emissions accounting; we do it based on GDP and capital flows. Our spending pattern is one way that connects our actions to emissions directly.
How do you calculate carbon footprints, and what factors allow you to customize an individual's carbon footprint?
We use a couple of different data sources to translate the dollars you spend into your emissions. First, we look at what you've bought, more from a category perspective than from an item perspective, because credit card data doesn't tell us exactly what was in your basket. They only tell us you spent $100 at Whole Foods or $10 at Starbucks. We translate that into more specific category information and use a national level carbon accounting data set called EEIO Data, which is about the input/output flows of GDP, to translate those dollar values into expected carbon output. Our secret sauce is mapping carbon weights to transaction types based on what goes into those types of purchases and the carbon impact of those things.
We also make the estimates better with a little bit of information about the user. So if we know that a user is vegetarian, they'll have a different carbon footprint from grocery shopping than someone who eats meat every other day. If we know that someone lives in a specific area code, we can better estimate the emissions impact of their utility bill than someone else. We're able to go a step further and our algorithms are also getting better as we have more data.
Why does precision matter when it comes to carbon accounting?
I think accuracy matters in that it makes data more relevant and more actionable. We try to abide by that. It's much more pertinent to know what I should do in the climate crisis rather than just the overall scale of the problem, which can feel intractable.
What I think is interesting about what we do at Joro is that we're able to draw a line between your actions, your scope of influence, and their impact. Creating that relevancy, I think that's where it makes it actionable. We're shooting for that 80/20 accuracy level where we can give people a sense of the relative importance of the different choices they're making, so they can focus on the ones that matter most. We want people to know that maybe their utility bill, the way they buy at the grocery store, and how they travel for the holidays are, for them, the three most significant things that they should worry about. Relative to that, maybe their clothing purchases are less critical, depending on their profile.
Can you explain why Joro is more than a carbon offset marketplace?
Carbon offsets are one of many tools that we have as people to influence global emissions. Zooming out a little bit, we're trying to help consumers understand the 65% of global emissions that we influence through our choices. As I mentioned, that's how we power our homes, how we travel, how we eat, and what we buy. Those are the things that influence most of the emissions that come from our economy in our society.
Our goal is to help people find the low-hanging fruit initially, and where they can make an immediate difference, and then work towards the things that are harder over time in building their climate action practice. For some people, offsets might be part of that. Offsets are valuable to influence the aspects of your life that you don't think you can change yet. No matter how much all of us try, we'll still have some emissions at the end of the day. There's some portion of our emissions that we need to invest in figuring out how to reduce further through other means. Offsets are one way of doing that. For other people, though, they might not be interested in purchasing offsets. For them, advocacy might be way more interesting to influence that portion of their mission that they don't feel like they can reduce in their own lives.
We're creating a more holistic way of thinking about your power as a consumer and as a person on the climate crisis rather than touting offsets as the primary way people can make an impact.
Could you talk about the app’s social aspects and how you see that as a part of the bigger picture?
A critical part of the platform we're building is allowing people to connect with others like them, who are making an impact. Together, the influence is much more significant than any one of us could have alone. It's important to recognize that billions of people made lots and lots of choices over many years to get us to this place, and it's not going to be any one person's ability or responsibility to change that. The most important thing is to know that you're not doing it alone to motivate real, lasting change. It's also way more fun and engaging. We’re dealing with a collective action problem: a tragedy of the commons. A big part of what's been so rewarding about building the app is getting to see how my impact adds up with other people and comparing how I'm doing with others.
What other features on the roadmap are you most excited about?
We’re working on more social features. That's something users have been asking for: to see more easily when other people they know are taking action and draw inspiration from that. Our team is working on the beginning of an activity feed, which may even be live by the time this interview is out. We're also working on more ways for people to tackle bigger challenges. Lastly, we're working on creating more content that helps people learn along the way. For instance, we launched a home energy challenge for people to unplug devices and turn down the thermostat in their house. But unplugging devices can be tough to remember to do every day. We wrote an article on the best smart plugs and strips you can set once and never have to do it again. Those are the types of content and life hacks that we'll try to offer people to tackle more difficult challenges.
Does Joro plan to expand its customer base beyond consumers?
One of the things we're thinking about is how do we help people understand the relative carbon impact of different companies they're buying from, so they can directly influence their companies to offer more sustainable products. Also, there's an opportunity for companies to use the platform with their employees or with their communities. It’s still early days, but we have a groups feature in the app. But there is absolutely an opportunity to build custom groups for employees or communities that want to have an impact together and achieve a specific goal.
What would be the impact of a carbon price for Joro?
In some ways, what Joro allows you to do is carbon tax yourself. If you're seeing the impact of your consumption and choosing an offset accordingly, that’s effectively a personal carbon tax. If there was a mandated carbon tax, I think Joro could do an excellent job of helping people understand how much that carbon tax should be. Also, if there are incentives associated with it, like a carbon fee and dividend, Joro could allow users to benefit from making those reductions. I hope that a platform like ours could help bring a carbon tax into reality.
The natural extension of this question is the importance of privacy and security. As people become more aware of their carbon accounting as part of their life and as the government may decide to implement policies to regulate our carbon accounting, I think it'll be increasingly important for companies like us to take a strong stance on the privacy and security of our users' data.
What impact will rapid decarbonization over the next decade have on Joro’s business model?
The long term goal is to reach a totally decarbonized society, and when that day happens, I hope that Joro’s job will be done because there will be no such thing as a carbon footprint. Now, recognizing that that future is at least several decades to come, I think that the role of Joro is in accelerating that future.
By revealing where emissions come from today and allowing consumers to focus on using their influence to drive down emissions, Joro is a platform through which we can demonstrate our collective demand for a decarbonized society. We're going to need investments in transportation, infrastructure, and new types of innovative financing. I see Joro as a platform for citizens and consumers to demonstrate their need for lower carbon products and lifestyles faster. I hope to one day see the day where we don’t need Joro anymore because we’ll have achieved a totally decarbonized society.
🔥🔥🔥 Rapid-fire round 🔥🔥🔥
What other climate topics are you most interested in right now?
🚗 Electrification of transportation, especially in the developing world
🔌 Decentralized renewable energy
🌏 Ancient, unsexy industries (e.g., dirt & concrete)
What do you think is overhyped?
High-tech approaches to carbon capture 🧐
What’s your climate hot take?
People often lose sight of the fact that if we fail to solve the climate crisis and humans become extinct, the earth will still be here. We don't matter as much as we think we do.
All you need to know about carbon offsets
Carbon offsets have come up numerous times on The Cool Down, but it’s a topic that often confuses people. What are they? How do they work? Do they actually help in the fight against climate crisis? We’ve received several questions like this, and introducing Joro presents the perfect opportunity to demystify this important climate tool.
Global warming 101
You probably already know this, but it bears repeating—the planet is experiencing unprecedented climate change due to anthropogenic activity increasing greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere. GHGs, like carbon dioxide and methane, absorb and trap solar radiation in the atmosphere. More solar radiation = a warmer planet.
Unfortunately, almost everything you do in today’s society releases emissions into the atmosphere, either directly or indirectly. We destroy carbon-sequestering forests to make paper and tissue products; we eat exceptional amounts of dairy from methane-producing cows; we drive cars that run on fossil fuels. Our “modern” society is not optimized to minimize emissions.
As a consequence, we all have a unique carbon footprint (net emissions impact) based on our lifestyle choices. While you can take measures to lower your carbon footprint, avoiding carbon emissions altogether is nearly impossible. This is where offsets and carbon markets come into play.
Enter carbon markets
A carbon offset is a credit that represents the reduction or avoidance of one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent. Offsets exist to allow emitters to theoretically negate their carbon footprint. One simple example of a carbon offset project is tree planting. Let’s say you drive a car every day and release some amount of greenhouse gases each month. If you wanted to mitigate those monthly emissions, short of buying an electric car, one action you might take is to plant a bunch of trees in your yard (recall that trees sequester carbon dioxide). But there are obvious practical limitations to planting trees—it’s hard work, you may not have a yard, etc. Carbon markets exist to allow you to pay someone else to reduce CO2 and other GHGs on your behalf. Keeping with our example, you could use a tool (like Joro) to purchase carbon offset from a reforestation project to mitigate your monthly car emissions.
What about offsets for other GHGs besides CO2?
As a matter of convention, offsets are denoted in units of CO2-equivalent to standardize the emissions impact of a given project. Greenhouse gases have varying global warming potentials (GWP) per ton. For example, one ton of methane has a GWP roughly 28x greater than one ton of carbon dioxide. Though most emissions reduction projects target CO2, there are some that focus on alternative GHGs. Keeping with the methane example, if a methane abatement project were to reduce 1 ton of methane, that would translate to ~28 tons of CO2-equivalent or 28 carbon offset credits.
What are some types of offsets besides reforestation?
The two broad types of offsets are removal of existing emissions and avoidance of future emissions.
Removal examples:
Direct air capture — carbon can be directly captured from the air and stored in various places like basaltic rock formations or concrete
Soil restoration — healthy soil is a powerful way to capture and store carbon
Kelp farming — the aquatic analog to reforestation; more kelp = more carbon storage
Avoidance examples:
Renewable energy — creating a supply of clean energy (e.g., wind or solar) can avert the burning of fossil fuels
Methane combustion — burning methane converts it to CO2, which is far less damaging to the atmosphere
Refrigerant capture/destruction — refrigerants are up to 10,900 times more potent than CO2; they can be destroyed, like methane, to prevent the release of potent GHGs
Avoided deforestation — prevents carbon-sequestering forests from being destroyed
Offsets are not a panacea
Carbon markets have a poor reputation because of scams, double-counting of credits, and other counter-productive behavior that’s plagued the space. But, when done right, offsets are a great solution to economically encourage emissions drawdown. A recent wave of companies are re-introducing trust and transparency into the offsets ecosystem by leveraging AI, satellite imagery, blockchain, and more. While exciting, carbon offsets still need to be viewed as a bridge solution while we decarbonize the underlying sources of emissions.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario where carbon markets in isolation are sufficient to reduce both historical and ongoing emissions. Nonetheless, carbon offsets will have an important role over the next two decades as we unlearn our addiction to GHG emissions. Outside of the obvious drawdown benefit, the software built on top of carbon markets will play an important role in training people and businesses to consider emissions in their decision-making.
How to buy high-quality carbon offsets
Look no further than Joro. There are three reasons we recommend Joro:
Affordability — Joro charges $1.00 per offset transaction. Other carbon offset marketplaces take as much as 20% commission per transaction.
Offsets you can trust — Joro partners with best-in-class offset project originators, like Pachama and Nori. You can feel confident that your money is not going towards double counting or low-impact projects.
In-depth analysis — Joro offers a detailed breakdown of the highest sources of emissions in your life. Paired with the educational opportunities in the app, this can help you focus on the greatest sources of leverage to lower your carbon footprint even before purchasing offsets.
Thanks for reading 🙏 If you have any feedback or want us to research a particular topic, please leave a comment below or send us a note. Also, if you’re not a subscriber yet, you know what to do 👇