When Kira Roberts moved to Juneau, Alaska, last summer, she immediately noticed how the town of 31,000 changes when the cruise ships dock each morning. Thousands of people pour in, only to disappear by nightfall. As the season winds down in the fall, the parade of buses passing through her neighborhood slows, and the trails near her home and the vast Mendenhall Glacier are no longer teeming with tourists.
“That unique rhythm of Juneau is really striking to me,” she said. “It’s just a little crazy to think that it’s all a mile from my house.”
But Mendenhall is shrinking fast: the 13-mile-long glacier has receded about a mile in the last 40 years. Getting all those tourists to Juneau — about 1.5 million this summer by cruise ship alone — requires burning the very thing contributing to its retreat: fossil fuels.
In an effort to mitigate some of that CO2, some of those who go whale watching or visit the glacier are asked to pay a few dollars to offset their emissions. The money goes to the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund, but instead of buying credits from some distant (and dubious) offset projectthe nonprofit spends that cash on installing heat pumps, targeting residents like Roberts who rely on oil heating systems.
Heat pumps are a no-brainer in Juneau’s mild (for Alaska) winters, said Andy Romanoff, who administers the fund. Juneau’s grid relies on emissions-free hydropower, so electricity is cheaper and less polluting as oil heat. They too save residents money – Roberts said she pays about $500 a month in heating oil, and has seen her electric bill go up just $30.
“The financial difference is huge,” she said
Programs from Monterey, California, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, have tried to use similar models to fund local renewable or energy efficiency projects, and carbon offsets for flying and other activities are nothing new. But most of the voluntary market for such things is managed by large companies supporting distant projects. The Juneau-based fund is eager to capitalize on the massive tourist interest in its backyard.
The program, until recently called the Juneau Carbon Offset Fund, began in 2019 when members of the advocacy organization Renewable Juneau discussed how to help Juneau meet its goal of having renewable energy supply 80 percent of the city’s energy needs by 2045. The organization’s existing heat pump programs only reached the “low-hanging fruit,” Romanoff said: People who had money and were ready to switch for climate reasons alone. It pitched the fund as a way to get the appliances — and the fossil fuel reduction they provide — to more residents.
Romanoff, who is also executive director of the nonprofit Alaska Heat Smart, is aware of the recent reputation carbon offsets have received, but believes the fund’s focus on heat pumps, and local jobs, provides transparency and accountability. “It’s a carbon cost that people can actually relate to and understand,” he said.
Many voluntary offset projects overestimate the emissions they prevent, sometimes by as much as five to 10 times, Dr. Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, said. “Project developers make methodological choices that give them more credits instead of less,” she said, and those who verify the claims don’t force conservative estimates when there’s uncertainty.
The Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund uses three years of utility bills to determine how much oil a recipient burned before getting a heat pump. It has paid for 41 installations since 2019, at an average cost of $7,000, and estimates the devices will prevent 3,125 metric tons of carbon emissions over their 15-year lifespan. Those calculationsplus a subsidy from non-tourism donations, brings its carbon price to $46 per ton.
It is more expensive than many voluntary credits, but in line with what Haya said, projects are of higher quality. “It looks like the cost of real mitigation,” she said. A more fundamental issue is proving that any offset project would not have happened on its own, Haya said.
Romanoff believes their project meets this condition because the heat pumps go to residents who earn less than 80 percent of the local median income. One of the first recipients, Garri Constantine, lived far below it when his system was installed. In the three years since, Constantine has become an evangelist for the technology, in part because he no longer spends $300 a month on firewood, trading it for a $50 monthly increase in his electricity bill.
“I just don’t understand why these things haven’t taken off like wildfire,” he said.
The fund has $150,000 in the bank, Romanoff said, but the speed at which it can operate is limited by a nationwide shortage of installers. Most of those donations came from the nearby gold mine, but Allen Marine, a regional tour operator, began offering the fund to passengers this summer, offering a subscription donation when they book online. It saw the fund as an opportunity to “give back to the communities in which we operate,” says Travis Mingo, VP of operations. As part of the partnership, the Carbon Reduction Fund has agreed to begin financing heat pumps in other Allen Marine destinations, such as Ketchikan and Sitka.
A much smaller company, Wild Coast Excursions, includes the settlement in its prices. When owner Peter Nave’s plan for summer tours of the local ski mountain failed, he switched to bear viewing and alpine hikes, some of which are far enough to require helicopter rides. Climate change is especially visible to Nave, a Juneau native who saw the dramatic changes in Mendenhall up close and worked as a state landslide forecaster. He covers a 125 percent offset of the climate impact of those excursions, labeling his company as “carbon negative.” He estimates it will end up being about 1 percent of the price of each tour. In his mind, it’s simply a cost of doing business.
“I kind of rationalized that if I could offset more than we’d use, I’d feel a little better about taking on [the helicopter] strategy,” he said.
He is skeptical about offsets in general, but the tangibility of this program has made a difference. “I could see the reduction happening because I know the heat pumps work, my friends have them, people I know are installing them,” he said.
However, Wild Coast Excursions’ contribution to the carbon reduction fund in the first year is unlikely to cover even one heat pump. Inclusive vessels or major airlines in the program would make a much bigger dent in Juneau’s emissions. Romanoff said his organization had an initial discussion with a local representative of a major cruise company, but was told it would not participate if the fund only benefited Juneau and the compensations were not verified by a third party.
The Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund began pursuing verification with Verra, the world’s largest certifier of voluntary credits by volume, but walked away because of the cost and its own discomfort about negative press coverage. “We could install five or six heat pumps with that money,” Romanoff said.
Fees are one tool that cruise lines are considering “on a case-by-case basis” to meet their own emissions goals, said Lanie Downs, a spokeswoman for Cruise Lines International Association Alaska.
Carnival Plc, which owns three cruise lines operating in Alaska, said it would consider carbon offsets only if energy efficiency options have been exhausted. The other two major cruise lines that call regularly in Juneau did not respond to requests for comment, but list counterpurchases in their annual sustainability reports.
While the city charges a per-head passenger fee for cruise ships, that revenue can only be used for specific projects in the port area. Alexandra Pierce, Juneau’s tourism manager, said the city has “never formally proposed any emissions fees” on cruise ships, but pointed to the industry’s involvement in efforts to reduce cruise emissions and install shore electric power, the marine equivalent of the stop idle emissions. .
Allen Marine has “initiated discussions” about including a settlement fee on its tours sold by cruise lines. “As we go through contract renewals, it will actually start to snowball the amount of money we can receive for this program,” Mingo said. But ultimately this leaves the bulk of tourists’ emissions – the cruises – unexplained.
Romanoff gets a few emails a year from people in other parts of Alaska and the Lower 48 who are interested in starting their own counter fund. He thinks his organization’s model can be replicated in places with many oil heating systems to replace. That said, a carbon price based on replacing gas-fired heat could be too expensive for most people, he said.
But in the Alaskan panhandle, he thinks a “foundation” of support from small businesses could make a difference in getting the vessels on board. “Once we build that arsenal to a certain size, then I think it will speak pretty loud and clear,” he said.
