How ICEMAN Can Benefit Businesses and the Economy

How ICEMAN Can Benefit Businesses and the Economy

The common fear about many of the climate change solutions generally recommended by international consortiums like the Kyoto Protocol—policies such as cap and trade or carbon fee and dividend—is that they will simply pass the cost on to the consumer, leading to inflation and negatively impacting the economy.

With ICEMAN, there is no such fear. In fact, ICEMAN will have the opposite effect, increasing profit margins and reducing the costs of products—all while reducing carbon emissions.

ICEMAN doesn’t incur any costs in and of itself. It won’t cost anything to be included in the Index; we’ll do that automatically, and companies will automatically be listed on the Index website. You don’t have to pay for the certification or the certified label. ICEMAN won’t increase your expense or increase the cost of your product.

ICEMAN will actually save companies money. Making the adjustments necessary to earn a higher CFI value will actually reduce the cost of manufacturing products due to the energy-saving measures companies will need to implement to reduce their carbon footprint.

The fact is, it pays to adopt renewable energy. There is already a strong push for “green” products because of their cost-saving benefits. For example, solar panels take about seven to eight years to make up their cost in electrical savings; the life span of solar panels is thirty years, so you get twenty-three years of free electricity! When the costs of implementing the energy reduction technologies are offset by energy savings, there is potential for a net profit over the life span of the building.

Solar is leading the way in terms of saving energy while saving money, but it’s not the only cost-effective renewable energy source. Hydroelectricity is also very cheap. I worked on a project in Massena, NY, which uses electricity from a hydroelectric grid. We bought, worked, and lived on a family farm there, and I discovered that our electricity prices were three cents per kilowatt hour—versus twenty-two cents per kilowatt hour in East Hampton!

With ICEMAN, there won’t be any mandate on what companies do with the money they save from investing in renewable energy. Companies can put those savings toward their bottom line, making them more profitable; they can in turn pass that profit on to their shareholders. They can use those savings to lower the cost of their products for consumers, giving themselves an even greater competitive advantage in the marketplace. They can even put those savings toward purchasing carbon offsets to raise their CFI value even more and give themselves even more of a competitive edge!

In this way, ICEMAN fits perfectly into a free market economy by incentivizing the use of renewable energy, creating a financial benefit for the company and thereby reducing the cost of products for consumers.

It’s a win-win situation. Having a smaller carbon footprint, as confirmed by a higher CFI rating, will improve your corporate image and increase your competitive advantage. People want to buy products that have a lower carbon footprint and will respond positively to a company that is actively and visibly working to lower its carbon footprint. In addition to this, you have the benefit to your bottom line, with savings from investing in and using renewable energy which can then be passed on to shareholders and/or consumers.

And, to top it all off, you are actively reducing the harmful greenhouse gasses your business is putting into the atmosphere, helping to combat and slow climate change. You will literally be helping to save the world.

But the benefits of ICEMAN go beyond individual businesses, extending to the economy as a whole, on a state, national, and even global level. Investing in clean energy infrastructure directly creates jobs. Building solar panels, installing and maintaining wind farms and solar farms—these are all job creators.

And it doesn’t stop there. When a community—be it a town, a region, or an entire state—invests in renewable infrastructure, ICEMAN will guarantee that infrastructure will be a draw for manufacturers and companies to come to that area. When manufacturers and companies move into an area, they bring jobs with them—not just in the jobs they directly provide, but in the businesses that will grow and thrive to support the people and families moving to the area to work those jobs.

Jobs and economic development follow the industry, and industry follows the technology it requires to be successful. When railroads were built across America, towns developed around railroad stops. At the time, the railroad was the height of technology; and wherever the railroad went, industry followed. The industry needed the technology of transportation; it needed arteries with which to move products, so it went where the railroad was.

Today, transportation is no longer the peak of technology, but rather a given. You can get anywhere to anywhere with relative ease. Today, with ICEMAN, the peak of technology that will draw the industry will be renewable energy infrastructure. Just as transportation played a critical role in developing industry in the past, renewable energy will drive industry in the present and future.

With ICEMAN, we can have a quadruple win: a win for businesses, a win for consumers, a win for the economy—and a win for our environment and the planet we all share.

To learn more about ICEMAN, I invite you to my podcast, Decarbonize the World. I speak with trailblazing leaders with goals of achieving carbon neutrality and using 100% renewable energy.