What The Funk?

0:00 We're back on what the funk, this is my first time recording. I think in five weeks, Tim, I miss it. I'll tell you, this is one of my favorite hours or so each week because, you know, this,

0:14 you're a cyclist. So I think you find a way to find your Zen. We'll get into all of that. My Zen is actually doing this podcast because it's the only time where I get to turn my phone upside down,

0:24 I get to listen to people authentically ask questions and get to sort of the root of what motivates people. I know you're a pretty motivated guy, Tim Banchus, and we'll get into all of that. But

0:38 just wanted to kind of quickly get everybody caught up. We've had a good run here on what the funk we will continue recording podcasts. I know I have a good set of loyal listeners and I apologize

0:49 for the delay. But you know, life, my oldest daughter is having her Bob Mitzvah next weekend, which is a huge deal in the Jewish religion. I've been traveling. Yeah, thanks, I've been

1:02 traveling nonstop. I think something like eight different one ways, 10 different one ways over the course of the last four weeks. So I'm a little bit tired, but that's all good. Lots of really,

1:13 really awesome stuff happening in the oil and gas space and the sustainability space in the funk futures land. But that's enough about me, Tim. I want this podcast to be a lot about you, a lot

1:24 about the awesome stuff that you're doing with carbon cred that I've seen firsthand is very impressive, but before we do all that, I want to give them to your background. And I ask this question to

1:34 all of my guests. Who is Tim Vages? Well, that's a big open-ended question. I know. But you're asking it. I guess if you want to sort of get a simple handle on that, as you mentioned earlier,

1:47 I'm a founder and CEO of carbon cred, a new climate tech startup that we've put together, which obviously we'll talk about more that's my current focus. Other than that. It's been all over the

2:00 world. Someone asked me the other day. Yeah, someone asked me, Well, where are you from? And I was like, Ooh, that sounds like a bar story. Because I was raised in Asia. So that would be

2:14 actually 30 countries around the world. And my parents traveled a lot and I went to a lot of places, saw a lot of unique things. And I guess one common trend and I, this is where it ties back to

2:23 energy is from an early age, you wind up seeing the key differences that just a little bit of energy makes in people's lives and how it completely can transform what they're seeing and doing around

2:35 the world. So that's how I think my upbringing ties into energy and the energy space. But other than that, schools, hospitals, and orphanages, I wound up building them, repairing them, or

2:48 fundraising them, getting teams of people to build them along with myself.

2:53 That's hands on everything from electrical to plumbing, to laying bricks and cutting wood.

2:60 And that would be, like I said, officially nine countries, I'm officially 13. And it's always been a great thing to be able to do that. After that, of course, I got involved in engineering.

3:12 That would be mechanical at Waterloo, the University of Waterloo, and then a chemical bimolecular from Cornell University. And then after that, it's an electrical engineering from the University

3:22 of Calgary. A long winding road that ultimately led you to Calgary. Do you consider Calgary home now? Like, is this where you're gonna stay for a while? Or do you really not let the grass grow

3:32 under your feet? You could see yourself living somewhere else in the next few years. I love Calgary as a city. I think it's absolutely beautiful. It actually reminds me a lot of Denver. I think

3:42 it's pretty much, you know, 612 does it. It's a beautiful place. I don't know yet where carbon credit is gonna take us as a company. And so I'm happy to be flexible to make sure that we match the

3:53 market and we meet market conditions. And you got, we'll get into carbon credit here shortly We've got some big. Things going on carbon cred is a funk futures client and it's different than any

4:04 client that we've had to this point with the exception of maybe actual hq Which is also a sustainability technology company? most of the companies that we work with as a software sales consult

4:17 fractional sales resource Is companies that really are sort of core niche? oil and gas tech With carbon cred, it's like one day we have a meeting with Amgen the next day It's a meeting with Boeing

4:32 the next day. It's a meeting with a major oil and gas company the next it's with the University Man you have a massive total addressable market for your carbon credit product and it's effectively

4:44 when we were trying to get to the root of who do we talk to it's anybody who Transports themselves somehow. It's anybody who is in part in a mitter. that sits in a car, that drives in a car, that

5:00 could find a different means of public transportation, that has a baseline of emissions that they create as a person, as a part of a corporation, and from that baseline, how can it be reduced?

5:15 Talk to me about the genesis, the etymology of carbon cred, and where you see it going. What is carbon cred? Absolutely I guess I could say it probably started back in 2009, when I was actually

5:29 down in Mexico, and I started to really think about, and listen to, at the time, there were no podcasts, but university lectures on science, technology, and the direction things were going.

5:39 And I got more excited about the fact that really energy is the core thing that got us away from May and the rocks together. And as

5:54 I progressed through engineering, and then moved into the actual workforce, is down in Tennessee at Oak Ridge National Labs designing a new energy storage system. for them. And then I moved to

6:00 actually an oil and gas company to design a tech that is a renewable energy that winds up being able to take 6 million cars off the road, dispose of over 200, 000 Olympic pools of tailings water and

6:11 still has a 29 rate of return with actually like a half billion dollar NPV. And it's those kind of projects that really get me excited because we can turn the whole challenge of needing to develop a

6:24 climate tech into one that actually makes money and bring success to your companies who implement it. So with that kind of mindset, I started working on the idea of carbon cred and on September 19th,

6:37 2021,

6:39 I actually put the idea together in its entirety and then wrote the patents and the ideas behind it as well as all the algorithms and the technology that goes into it. And what I think was probably

6:52 the most impactful part of the journey was really understanding how you can. take constraints that otherwise seem incredibly challenging and very, very daunting in the market and try and bring them

7:03 together to actually create a solution. So instead of looking at them as a problem that limits you, how can you think of a solution example of this would be the free market? How do we leverage free

7:13 market economics to be able to address climate change? A lot of people say, oh, we need to be altruistic to solve it. And that is amazing. And the key part, and if people want to do it, that is

7:22 fantastic We also need to be able to leverage the sort of, you know, capitalism and the free market economics to be able to incentivize people to make those changes so we can progress the emissions

7:34 reduction story even faster. When we talk about constraints in the market, we can think about all the challenges that we're facing in society and the journal Nature reports that global youth under

7:42 the age of 30 are suffering from either climate anxiety or some type of concern. How do we give them the tools that they need to be able to take quantitative steps that actually make a difference?

7:52 And we're also intimidated by the fact that there really doesn't seem to be a solution. on a personal level that engages with us as people to be able to solve those kind of challenges. For companies,

8:02 we see increased legislation emissions targets, increasing price of carbon. The SEC is looking at ESG reporting. As we know, the IFRS just put out new S2 standards on June 26th. That's a by

8:17 January 1st, 2024. You need to start reporting scope three emissions. This one's up creating some unique challenges Now, I realize there's some flexibility in there for the January 1st date.

8:29 They're talking about giving an extra quarter and a few other things. But it really does become a challenge that on both the individual side and on the corporate side, it looks like we need to make

8:38 changes and we need to face these challenges. But how do we do this in a way that makes economic sense for all of us? And also addresses the need that we inherently have and our concerns and fears

8:48 as a society

8:51 One of the things I guess I might. framed out to be able to address this was when we bump up against these key constraints, what are those constraints? First, we have to be able to address them

9:03 and know what they are to be able to solve them.

9:07 And the first one would be something like, you know, at least from my perspective, there really isn't just a magical solution waiting just around the bend in terms of an infinite source of energy

9:17 that will solve all of our problems. I mean, this is backed up by the Kardaship scale, but it just means that there isn't some sort of magical source. I was talking with someone the other day,

9:26 and they said, Oh, we'll be okay because, you know, the UFOs are going to give us their tech. And I was like, What? I mean, it's a possibility, but I would say it's low on the probability

9:37 list of things that as an engineer, I would look as a solution when we have to be very quantitative about what we actually bring to the market I hope it's interesting, but I think we tend towards

9:48 more data and facts as engineers. And then there's the challenge that we have really a finite energy source to be able to do all of our activities on Earth. And I was talking with you earlier, and

10:02 I was mentioning that fact that at the current output of energy, and our current trajectory of energy consumption, in 800 years, the Earth has to have a higher output of energy than the sun, which

10:12 obviously we know is not gonna be able to happen. And then when we look at the engineering aspect, in this case, the second law of thermodynamics, it basically says anytime that you, you know,

10:24 try and consume more, you only increase the entropy of the problem. So when we look at something like carbon capture, which we definitely need to do, and we should be looking at, it only ever

10:34 uses about 35 or so percent more energy to be able to capture that carbon, to be able to harness it. So what you wind up with is dipping into that finite energy source that we just talked about as

10:45 the previous problem, 40 faster. So you get on the hamster wheel, but the hamster wheel only moves faster and faster.

10:53 And then also as people, I mean, what we're facing is the fact that what got us out of the trees was our drive and the fact that we're hungry for more and we're not satisfied with where we are as a

11:03 species. And we always want to be growing and developing. And I think that is fantastic. It presents a bit of a challenge when it comes to climate change when we ask someone then to turn around and

11:12 give up something that they've acquired. Yeah. Missions, sacrifice emissions and in exchange, well, we're not going to give you anything, you just need to do a goodness of your heart We're not

11:22 all mother Teresa's. So how do we come up with a solution that enables us to get something in return for those sacrifices that we're making?

11:31 And then, of course, we can apply this, say, to the free market and how do we use that as a constraint to make sure that we're looking at it from that perspective.

11:41 And I think then also all the legislation that's sort of coming into play as well. So when we put all those criteria together, how do we come up with a solution that matches all of those? and at

11:52 the same time. satisfies our personal need for change, for solving problems, and also addressing the challenges we see. And that, in a nutshell, is what you've done with carbon grid, right? At

12:05 least the thesis behind it, I think. Absolutely. And I mean, that's really what our tech does. So when I put up the algorithms and designed the solution, I was like, well, how can we create

12:17 something that engages with people on a personal level? And so to do that, we have a unique app that is not just an app. Obviously, the algorithms behind us are very significant to be able to

12:29 entrust people the opportunity to get personal carbon credits. And if you're all of a sudden hearing carbon credits, I'm assuming your audience knows about carbon credits. Should I give a quick

12:38 explanation? I would assume that our audience is fairly well versed, but I wouldn't mind if you gave a very high level explanation It's perfect. Essentially, you can think of the idea of carbon

12:49 credits as a person, an industry. something, reducing their emissions, it gets quantified, and then those emissions reductions can be traded or sold to somebody else who pays money for them.

13:03 When we think Paris accord COP26, COP27, and all the sort of conferences as well as conversations that are happening around climate change, one of the key ingredients of how we sort of implemented

13:17 is something called carbon credits It's a trillion dollar market right now that has everything from legislation behind international governments. And so it is though dominated, as I mentioned, by

13:29 industry, by forestry, by agriculture and all that kind of stuff, how do we take that story which could be leveraged for all of us and democratize it to a personal level so that way you and I can

13:40 generate those kind of carbon credits on a personal basis? And what that means is when a person takes the actions that we're talking about and you start to allude to it. We start with the

13:51 low-hanging fruit of transportation. If you reduce your transportation emissions, we'll be able to give you carbon credits for those emissions reductions. And then you can take those carbon credits

14:02 and we're starting with companies and employees and you can sell them to your company who wants to be able to buy them to either meet their net zero commitments or to be able to hold on to them as a

14:11 liquid asset because the price of carbon is going up. In Canada, we are seeing about a 30 increase per year So how do you be able to channel that investment opportunity while you hold on to your

14:23 carbon credits year upon year and you can immediately see that there's significant returns on them. And then once the company owns those carbon credits, they can either use them to offset their

14:33 emissions and the huge advantage of that is you don't have to have a capital spend to be able to do it because its employees generating these emissions, which is an appropriately untapped resource

14:44 inside the company But we're not just obviously doing carbon credits. a company basis and as a business, do not have to be able to talk about them. And that's where we also help companies be able

14:57 to advertise these emissions reductions to stakeholders to demonstrate how they really are making a difference. We've got, you know, embedded websites, pieces that sort of have a live feed from

15:08 the app that talk directly about the emissions reductions who's doing them so that it is no longer sort of a green washing scenario where people don't understand about how say five or ten megatons of

15:19 CO2 are being reduced. But it's because Bob and Jane and Sanjay are all doing their part to be able to reduce their emissions and it's tied to individuals. So it becomes a real clear story about how

15:33 those emissions reductions are actually being generated. And you can then report those emissions on ESG reports, IFRS reports in a real quantitative manner that makes sense for industry and for the

15:45 government regulators who are viewing those reports. And it's this entire sort of coming together that makes sense. So let me explain it. And here's a quick little paragraph that I put together

15:56 that's kind of the story that tells it. So Sandy commutes to work by her car five days per week. After downloading our app, she makes the decision to take the bus or to carpool or to walk or to

16:08 bike to work instead of driving her car. And like I said, we just asked for this as a start one day per week. By taking the bus instead of driving, Sandy reduces her carbon emissions and earns

16:19 personal carbon credits. When Sandy checks her credit balance within the app and decides she wants to sell them, then with a click of a button, she sells her credits to an employer and they use

16:29 them to offset their emissions. Sandy's carbon credits are automatically communicated to the market via live feed from the app as emissions reductions on the company's website. And then those

16:42 emissions reductions are reported in a quantitative manner that fulfills all the acronyms like. ESG, IFRS, GRI, SaaS B reporting requirements. And additionally, we can solve the scope three

16:53 transportation emissions reductions, which are required by those agencies in a way that makes sense. And we can report that across the entire value chain. I love it. I love it. And I think that

17:04 you did a good job explaining it right there. A question for you. So I'm Jane or Sanjay, and I decide to ride my bike into work one day a week versus driving my car. And I start earning carbon

17:21 credits. Do I have to sell those to my employer? Can I sell them on an open market? Are there like carbon credit exchanges where I can say, okay, I wanna get the top rate for this carbon credit?

17:34 Or because the companies, the group that subscribes to carbon credit, they have the first write-over refusal or the only write a refusal to actually buy carbon credit for me. So at this early stage

17:45 we are limiting it. for employees being able to sell to their company. However, they do have the right to hold on to them. I mean, if you wanna hold on to them for the future, knowing what kind

17:54 of value you probably gonna get in the future, why wouldn't you hold on to them? However, for a company, obviously, they would like to be able to gain access to them, and they would like to

18:02 support their employees, because the advantage that a company has right now is instead of going out to the market and buying forestry or agriculture credits, which are excellent and probably still

18:12 need to be done, instead of your channeling that money right back into your employees and you're benefiting them. So you're paying them. So it kind of just completes that real virtuous loop. And

18:22 additionally, what makes the carbon credits special is they're irreversible. Because until we invent a time machine, you can't go back into the past and admit. And we are seeing increased risk

18:31 with different types of carbon credits as a function of what's happening right now with the change in the climate. For example, this year, we lost a lot of trees here in cannabis, Adelaide, to

18:41 forest fires, there were some tragic consequences I know you guys have been having some challenges

18:47 And it's those kind of things that change the risk profile of forestry carbon credits. So how do we make sure that we are having control in how we generate these and at the same time have the highest

18:58 quality? When you think about your target audience, who do you think is going to be the most logical buyer or subscriber of your platform? I mean, I know that you're working with us and we

19:10 primarily work with oil and gas companies, but I know there's been conversations around universities large corporation, pharmaceutical companies, people who trap, people who work publicly traded

19:22 companies that are based in cities where people actually have the option to take public transportation to me seem very logical. Is your total addressable market, like when you're pitching to

19:33 investors, the whole world, like all businesses, or is it, I need to segment this out. We think we're going to go after this, this market, we're going to go after this sect, we're going to go

19:44 after this vertical, Like, how do you quantify what to me is almost like an endless opportunity? I think what we would start to say is, there are certain types of companies, not necessarily from

19:56 a vertical, but that have certain behaviors in place that this makes the most sense for. So companies within person or hybrid work policies is what we want. Companies with say carbon neutral or net

20:09 zero or other emissions targets commitments that are trying to sort of meet those and address those that also, you know, makes really good sense. Or if companies are publishing ESG or they use,

20:20 happen to use IFRS in your financial reporting. Or you already report your scope through business travel emissions through another way. We can help quantify this kind of stuff and wind up being able

20:30 to save a company just from the business of emissions reporting stuff somewhere between 200 to

20:36 1, 000, depending on where you are in the world, depending on how much you're paying your salary for the teams that we're talking to in Europe. They'll be saving over a thousand euros per employee

20:43 per year.

20:46 It's over a couple hundred dollars, and it's those sort of key components that are all part of the solution that also generates carbon credits that companies find valuable. But I would say also from

20:56 a leader who might be interested in this, some national leaders of multinationals who want to demonstrate a local sustainability solution have found this to be of real interest Regional leaders who

21:09 are running sustainability competitions, I think we were talking with Boeing the other day, and they wound up bringing up the fact that they're competing between their different teams. In this case,

21:22 Austin is competing against Seattle, and Austin happened to be winning, and we were like, oh, well, maybe if you want to stay on top of Seattle, because they're downloading our app and using it

21:33 That's awesome. The other would be that if you're an ESG sustainability leader and you're looking for a tangible solution, you're looking for an easy win that doesn't take a capital spend.

21:44 implement something like this with inside your organization. Additionally, if you're trying to improve employee engagement or you're looking to be able to secure younger employees who are looking

21:53 for a company to demonstrate that they're participating in climate change and addressing those issues, do something like this. Or if you're a public relations leader who are trying to enhance the

22:05 social license and the brand trust with your company, I mean, they are a real time low right now, you can prove it because this is not a sort of story that winds up being random You can see and you

22:14 can tag this to people inside your organization. As the PR leader, you could be actually taking those actions. And then leaders who just have to happen a large workforce and don't have a big carbon

22:26 footprint, well, generate as a new liquid asset for your company that appreciates it about 30 per year. Yeah, it's really the, it's in some ways, it's the same conversation with every company

22:37 you're talking to, but in a lot of ways, it's a unique conversation with everybody you're talking to Let me throw a bit of a curve ball at you. So what about an oil and gas field services company

22:49 where their entire business is people driving to go places? How could they possibly reduce their emissions? Is this, okay, you're going to drive less mileage because you're becoming more efficient?

23:02 Is it, okay, we now have a 50 EV fleet and therefore EVs have a lower baseline of pollution or emissions and therefore they can gain some more carbon credits back. How does that work for a company

23:16 whose entire business is effectively driving around or flying around in that case? There's some real interesting subtleties there. The first is, it depends if you're just looking at these as

23:27 strictly from the voluntary market space or you're trying to get into them from the compliance space and in Alberta as well as California and in New York, there's a lot of compliance markets. For

23:39 that aspect, we have a really unique solution And here's out goes, if you happen to implement, say, a remote sensor on a tank that you normally have to go and check the level on, as you have to

23:52 go check this for HSE reasons, say, once a week, and you now implement a remote sensor on that. And so now you can monitor that from the office. That delta and emissions from now only having to

24:03 go, say, once a month to check that tank, you can get those as carbon credits, because now you're actually reducing your emissions So instead of it just being a single point solution, you can

24:14 actually improve on the value proposition for your company by even being able to get carbon credits. Interesting. Then when it comes to say, you know, people commuting out to remote work locations,

24:25 say in pickup trucks, well, there is now an increased impetus to be able to say, you know, a couple more people hop into that same pickup truck. Pick each other up at the beginning of, you know,

24:36 the lone road or something like that at a certain time No, why is that beneficial? if you all come in different cars, as soon as you started to say, ride, share, car polity, point together, we

24:47 can give carbon credits for the portion that you wanted to actually reduce your emissions by working together. Or it may be very well that some person really loves the sound and smell and everything

24:59 about a gasoline powered engine. That's okay too. Just reduce wherever you are on that spectrum. If you're driving a pickup truck and instead you can drive a Mustang, the difference in engine size

25:10 and emissions, we want to give you carbon credits because wherever we stand as a society with our missions, if we can drop those emissions, that's what we should be doing. And by gradually moving

25:21 through the perspective opportunity, we'll start to leverage those changes to the benefit of society as a whole. Yeah,

25:31 I'm learning a lot. Every conversation that we have, Tim, I enjoy because it's almost like sitting in a graduate school level sustainability class. I appreciate your openness and willingness to

25:42 answer these questions. And I know I've asked you in our various sessions, but now asking you on a recorded session. Talk to me a little bit about when people say, this is greenwashing, right?

25:55 Okay, I understand what you're going for here, but I don't wanna take part in it because I don't believe in the movement that you're a part of it. How do you fundamentally address somebody who is

26:07 hesitant to embrace the idea of carbon credits or have used the ESG concept as a whole as greenwashing? Thanks for asking that. So I would say there's a couple things that I'll address in that

26:18 question. The first is, if people who are climate skeptics, I really appreciate working with them. Actually, one person on our core team that we have actually hired is a climate skeptic. And I

26:31 think that keeps people like me honest. If you're on the side of the fence, that is very focused on being able to reduce emissions, being able to explain it in that way. quantitative manner that

26:40 makes sense for both sides of the argument is absolutely crucial. And to this point, when we did our customer surveys, we found that people who disagreed with the idea of climate change and were

26:51 climate skeptics were 18 more likely to adopt our app, because they were like, well, it seems to make sense from a free market perspective we're in. And it's that kind of solution that enables

27:03 people from both sides of the argument to actually say, if you've figured out a way that we can do this, that makes sense, we want to be part of it. So how do we get that messaging out there, I

27:12 think, is essential? When you also, though, parse your question out for the other part that you were asking, which is essentially what really is the point of carbon offsets? Is it valuable? If

27:23 you wind up, for example,

27:26 reducing your emissions, but then selling it to someone else to be able to emit, does that even make sense? And what's right there is that if both of you chose to emit, you'd have double the

27:35 amount of emissions. That's kind of the low hanging obvious fruit to say. And part of that is, if the first person in that story winds up reducing their emissions, you can also see that it reduces

27:47 demand in the market. So the supply side of the market doesn't have to buy as many emissions because they don't have to produce quite as many products to be able to match the change in demand in the

27:57 marketplace. So you have a positive feedback loop that as we increase incentives in the carbon credit sphere, using free market economics, we can actually shift the dynamics of how we address

28:11 climate change, and as opposed to being legislation, we can use demand in the marketplace.

28:18 Also, when we talk about the idea of emissions, if companies don't emit at this point, we don't get our food or our consistency for life, right? We can't just turn off our heating in the

28:31 wintertime, at least up in Canada We can't

28:35 hear either, but we definitely can take a bus or ride share to work. So there are real things that we can do. Or I happen to mention this on another conversation I was having with you, but it's 10

28:47 petrochemical calories for every calorie of food that gets produced for us to eat. So if we turn off the petrochemical

28:57 spout right now, there becomes a challenge for us being able to produce our food. So how do we actually mitigate these emissions in the most efficient way possible for society? And one of the ways

29:08 we can do this is we can start with transportation. And then there's obviously the point that we have to make, that if we don't address emissions at this stage when it's voluntary and come up with

29:18 really good solutions, we don't necessarily want to have this mandated. So how do we get the right solution before we have to have a mandate to tell us to do something? Yeah, no,

29:31 that makes tons of sense. And I have a question about me personally and how I could use carbon credits based on my emissions print. And then also talk about an oil and gas company here in Denver.

29:43 I'll start with the oil and gas company and bring it back to my situation. So this is now adding up to me a little bit more, how Civitas Resources, a very impressive oil and gas company in Denver

29:53 who has, geez, with all of their acquisitions, tens of thousands of oil and gas wells. They're one of the top three producers in the DJ basin. They recently did a Permian Basin acquisition, and

30:07 they're wrapping their hands around a lot, but they've been very forward about how they want to tackle the carbon game. And they are touting themselves as the first carbon neutral oil and gas

30:21 company based in Colorado. And I just didn't fundamentally understand why until this conversation. It's probably because they're doing everything they can to be clean at the well, but that's not

30:30 100 carbon neutral. They're probably buying a ton of carbon offsets and voluntarily offering up. data and information as much as they probably could. Realistically, that's

30:43 the type of company who would see value in incorporating a carbon-cred type solution. Just sort of thinking about how a forward-thinking carbon-neutral, quote unquote, operator would approach their

30:56 emissions footprint. Second, so how about me? I work from home. I don't drive much. I go to the airport. There's not really a great option for me to get to the airport outside of either a car or

31:09 an Uber. Like, how would I benefit from using a carbon credit? You know what I mean? I already think that my emissions profile is pretty dang low because I'm not in my car. How would that work

31:21 for me? That's a really good question. I think there's several segments that we can think about when it comes to addressing that. 'Cause I mean, you do hear people say that we don't have time to

31:31 walk, bike, or take to transit work. Our schedules are tight. And people value the

31:39 time they place on their time. I mean, it's clearly a time is money. So how do we do that? We do have some very exciting solutions coming to the market that address this problem. We just can't

31:48 yet talk about

31:50 them. It's coming soon. And actually very soon, but we want to be cautious on it. But we do have something that actually addresses some of the exact challenges that you talked about. And so hold

32:01 on to your pants But also, though, I do want to put a little bit of a poke there and say, if we all dodge personal responsibility by saying we're too busy, then we can't expect a different outcome

32:12 as a society. So we do have to take some responsibility on this one. And what we understand, there's things like working mothers, dropping their children off that don't have other alternatives.

32:24 We have to be real about this. But we believe that there's enough people out there who can actually do something and just need direction. And if you're part of a bigger story, you really do have

32:33 that opportunity to start. Participating because then you don't feel like you're just one person versus the world and now there is it you can see it You can compete against People inside your

32:44 organization. You can compete on a larger scale You can even do one-on-one Competitions with your friends and you can add that element of gamification of the process which we think is really exciting

32:55 And you know It's real because someone's willing to pay you to take that action now the amount is not huge as a start But it increases with value over time and then we also you know We're starting to

33:06 have conversations with carpooling organizations and things like that But you can now much more closely integrate with people in your area at a much more affordable price than is currently available

33:17 And the other thing is you know what? You can just join me on the bus. You might get a couple stairs I'm sitting on the bus with a laptop So I'm there, you know working away because I don't have

33:28 the time to be able to just stand there not doing something So I'm, you know, even sometimes with one hand holding it while I type away with the other or whatever. And yeah, you get a couple of

33:36 stairs, but as more and more people join in, it becomes less of an oddity that we're actually focused on reducing our emissions. Yeah, I think that the key takeaway for me in this is, it's baby

33:50 steps, right? You're not trying to overhaul something that a lot of people will say, I can't do this, this is just too much for me to chew on. But you're just saying one day a week, take public

33:60 transportation, bike to the post office versus drive there once every couple of weeks, right? See what that starts to do from your carbon footprint, carbon credit, obtainment profile, and then

34:17 sell that back to your company for money. So our individual employees actually making money off of this platform right now, like somebody has changed, effectively changed how they operate, now

34:28 they take the bus four days a week instead of driving. four out of five days and they're literally able to sell those credits to their company and get a check for it. Is that actually happening

34:37 right now? Absolutely. So we have the full range. We have people who have, you know, instituted whatever it is, biking Wednesdays or busing Wednesdays. So that's one day per week. And then we

34:47 have other people who've transitioned over to four or five days because all they knew was like that next little sort of, you know, that have incentive to be able to make that change. So we

34:55 definitely have the full spectrum And yes, I think the question you asked is, how do we also, you know, what is the full story of how this works? And so here's how it works. Employees commute to

35:07 work, say by rideshare or public or bike instead of their car. And then they download our mobile app off either of the app stores, be it Android or Apple, and our mobile app logs that travel.

35:22 If your question is, what about all the cheating stuff? And I can tell you that as engineers, that's pretty much our number one concern. So we've spent a lot of time on that. managing that piece.

35:32 And then those missions reductions are actually earned as carbon credits by the individual. You can then choose to hold onto them or sell them to your company. And we're in the final stages of the

35:46 verification body that's, you know, approving us. I can say though that we have started something that is the first of its kind in the world. And we are going for the absolute highest quality

35:55 verification that is possible in the marketplace. So it's cool I haven't told you who's doing it, but I can tell you that it'll become public soon and it doesn't get any better quality than what

36:07 we're doing. The company then purchases these reliable carbon credits and they use them for their net zero emissions reductions. But as I said earlier, we do have this whole advertising piece that

36:19 enables companies to talk about this to the market. There's no, you know, green shame about this. And then we also put it in those reports where you get savings of like 1, 000 even up for

36:29 employee. And that's how we close the loop. You have personal action being connected to real tangible offsets, being connected to being able to display this to the stakeholders, and finally being

36:40 able to report on it quantitatively for shareholders. Lots of good stuff here. And one question, and then I'm going to put you on the hot seat. I'm going to ask you some rapid fire questions.

36:50 It's not about sustainability. We're going to lighten it up a little bit But is there a fixed price per carbon credit? Is it like a Bitcoin? You don't look at Bitcoin today. It's 29, 000. Is a

37:03 single carbon credit worth

37:06 7621? What is that equivalent? Or does it really range depending on type of carbon credit? Give me some insight into the carbon credit exchange market pricing. Absolutely. There's a huge range of

37:18 prices from less than a dollar to over a hundred. There's a big range. And I like to think of it essentially as using the term a

37:27 We have a Canadian dollar, we have a US dollar, we have a Zimbabwean dollar, and all of these are one dollars, but all of them have vastly different values inside the marketplace as a function of

37:39 the quality of the economic system and the faith in the economic system that backs that particular dollar. The same for carbon credits. The higher the quality of that carbon credit, the more

37:50 reliability, the more robust the process to be able to track and quantify it, that denotes a price There's also, for example, certain industry credits are lower priced. If they have less benefits

38:04 for a society that even go beyond just the reduction of carbon credits, then the price is also lower. But we're fortunate to be able to have the full range of all, we basically go down the

38:14 checklist and take every box that says this is the highest quality carbon credit and we're fortunate to be able to do that. Nice. Your reversibility of it, the certainty and all of those pieces

38:24 really come together. to be able to do that for the market. But you're correct, there is that variability and we're fortunate to be able to take that and be able to get at the very top of the

38:34 spectrum in terms of quality and everything like that. So that way the individuals who are taking those emissions reductions will be able to get increasingly better value over time. So that way it

38:46 increases the incentive for them to want to participate in reducing their emissions. Awesome, awesome. All right, well, I'm gonna put you on the hot seat We're gonna rapid fire a couple questions

38:57 here and then we'll wrap this thing up. So you don't have any expectation what these questions are and that's the beauty of it. You're an engineer, you're a methodical. I know I'm taking you out

39:05 of your comfort zone. It's okay, Tim, here we go. First, what is your favorite restaurant in Calgary? Can I change that?

39:14 Can I see what's my favorite restaurant in Canada? Okay. I know an amazing place called the Whalebone in Ottawa.

39:25 the way alone. It is a restaurant that has amazing food. And so one of the things I don't think you know about me during me, but the reason why I'm cautious is to say about a restaurant here is I

39:39 would typically be looking at Thai restaurants because I spent years in Thailand. I also happen to be able to be able to cook Thai food. I actually ran a kitchen We would serve over 915 meals per

39:52 day for humanitarian work. So that was like 305 meals for breakfast, 305 for lunch, 305 for dinner. So I actually wind up being able to cook on an industrial scale as well, which is one of those

40:04 crazy things that sort of comes up in the story. And as a result, I wind up being quite particular about the restaurants. And certainly if I were to give them a sort of a stamp of approval, I

40:14 would want to make sure that they are definitely up to snuff if someone tries it. And I would say the one that I have found would be the whale bone and I was very impressed with that one in Ottawa.

40:25 All right, well, I'm gonna have to have to ask Abe about that when, you know, Ottawa's not too far. I grew up in New Hampshire and I was doing some random Googling as I like to do sometimes. I

40:34 didn't grow up that far from some places in Ottawa. So I'll have to see how far that is next time I'm back home. Next, more logical, Celsius or Fahrenheit? I think you're asking me to create a

40:48 schism right here.

40:52 I actually use both OK, I'm familiar with both. I did my undergrad in Canada, so I wound up using Celsius and my grad studies. I wound up doing them in Fahrenheit.

41:04 So I'm I'm conversant in both. I would have to say I probably have a proclivity to as an engineer, always like to tag zero to a particular number. And so then from Celsius, it seems that when

41:17 water freezes, it kind of makes sense to me But either one of them is sufficiently fine, and I'm. Fortunately for me, I'm conversant in both. Fair enough, somewhat of

41:28 a politician-like answer, but I'll accept it, that's fine, you did both. What's your favorite, you've lived all over the place. What's your favorite country that you've ever lived in? I would

41:39 have to say, doing humanitarian work in Thailand, if you get away from the tourist areas or the areas where most people see about Thailand, the culture is amazingly unique And the reason I say that

41:53 is they're one of the four countries in Asia that was never colonized. So they have a very different perspective on our sort of Judeo-Christian or Calvinistic viewpoint that we have in the Western

42:05 Hemisphere. And so they look at life quite differently.

42:11 I find that to be actually quite refreshing 'cause some of the biases that we have in this part of the world don't even register on the spectrum there So it's not an issue of we have to overcome

42:21 something learn to change ingrained habits, it is a natural

42:28 conversation to just assume that everyone is free to think the way they are, free to live the way they are, and free to embrace the things that they embrace. And I appreciate that sort of idea that

42:40 of independence of individual thought being quite important. And at the same time, the manners and politeness and decorum that the society has is quite valuable Outside of that, I would say Austria

42:56 is gorgeous. But then you do have some incredible stuff over there in Colorado that just sort of, it's mind-bogglingly beautiful. I remember Silverton being an area that was outstanding even just

43:08 south of you. Yeah, yeah, I think that people here have a tendency to say, oh, it's more majestic in the Alps or somewhere that's not here, even if it's Western Canada But that's just because,

43:22 you know. it always has to be better somewhere else, right? At least in our minds eye. Final question. On that point, before we go, I was gonna say, I was talking to a group of people in

43:33 Golden BC, and I'm not sure if you know what that is, but it's the, in this case, it would be the western side of the Rockies. Yeah. And it is astounding. It is one of the most beautiful places

43:45 in the world. And I was talking to a group of guys there and they're like, you've been places. Where's the most beautiful place in the world? And I'm like, seriously, it's right here. Right

43:53 here. Right here. What we're saying is probably the most beautiful place. And they were like, now this is so normal. I'm like, that's because you've grown up here. You haven't seen. The other

44:05 places, this is amazing. So I have to say it's one of the reasons why I'm in Calgary because it's just, it winds up being so beautiful. You almost get punched drunk looking at scenery that is so

44:17 outstandingly amazing that it, It gives you a unique view on the world and lies. Yeah, you know, where I'm from in Northern New Hampshire, very close actually, with less than 100 miles from the

44:29 Canadian border, super lush and green, and definitely did not appreciate it, having grown up there and spending all of my time there. And what always was fascinating to me is going to a place

44:42 where they have palm trees, right? And things that I didn't have. And then, you know, living in Colorado for years and taking my family back, I remember going up there with my kids and my wife,

44:54 probably about five years ago, in an especially rainy year. So the grass was practically neon, right? And the trees are just hanging over the road. And I remember my wife's sister and her husband

45:07 came up to visit and her. I always thought it was so boring where I grew up and it wasn't that pretty and all that. And her sister's like, You got to grow up here. Like it was a privilege, right?

45:17 That I got to live somewhere that was so beautiful, like amazing, you must have been like. You know, in wonderland out here, I was like, Yeah, I just thought it was kind of lame to be honest.

45:26 But now I have a little bit more appreciation as I get older.

45:31 I guess that, you know, one of they say, you know, is the glass half full or is the glass half empty, right? I'm fine with that one. My professor wound up talking about that actual joke that

45:43 you talked about right there. And he, from an engineering perspective, the engineer's view of that is, you just have a glass that's twice the size it should be

45:53 Actually, the just making the glass a bit smaller, and that's the optimization of the solution. You wanna optimize it, just get a smaller glass, right? There you go. Don't worry about it having

46:02 to be half, that's a waste of glass and space. The size. Oh man, where can people find you? Where can they find carbon-cred website, LinkedIn, social media, things like that? Absolutely.

46:23 carboncredcom, that's C-A-R-B-O-N-C-R-E-Dcom. You can also reach out directly to me at timcarboncredcom, just email me. You can also do that to infocarboncredcom. We'd love

46:37 to hear from you. You can also try and download our app. Probably enable we 'cause far too get won't it for businesses, but we'll be able

46:44 to see that and get into contact with you. Yep. What else? Reach out to me on LinkedIn. That's Tim Benches The last name is spelt kind of tricky. It's B-W-E-N-T-J-E-S. I'd be happy to connect

46:58 with you. That's great. Yeah, the thing I wanted

47:03 to say, just comment on what you were talking about at the areas of the world that are beautiful. I wanted to go back to that briefly. I wanted to say that I think I value the idea of the beauty

47:09 that comes from rain. Yeah. I grew up in a lot of places that were quite arid and even I was down in the Southwest and you start to have this huge appreciation now and it doesn't go away when you

47:21 see rain and you start realizing how beautiful it is. And to that effect, even the area that you are, I'm leaving actually at two in the morning to be able to drive six of us who are going, I'm

47:34 taking all my nieces and nephews to Portage. So I'm not sure if you know what that is, but it is you put canoes on your back with backpacks and you pop them into rivers and lakes and you paddle

47:45 across them and then you hike with your canoes over to the next river and body of water And you're gonna spend a week going down the rivers and bodies of water all together as a family. And it's

47:56 gonna be amazing. Well, watch out for grizzly bears, I guess. I don't know, that seems like something that I'd have to be concerned about in that situation. But stay safe out there. I agree

48:07 with that. It's probably what draws me so much to the Pacific Northwest, the United States. I absolutely love it out there. And it reminds me a little bit of where I grew up at home and just

48:16 couldn't wait to get away from when I was younger too now. 2000 miles away and I miss it so you know final comment from me on here. This is actually This was a really fun episode. I enjoy kind of

48:28 hearing your take on all things sustainability ESG carbon credit I learned a lot. I hope our listeners learned a lot and also I'm not sure you were aware of this but when we had tripping over the

48:38 barrel my podcast partner his name was Tim and That Tim did pass away sadly from pancreatic cancer liver cancer Just a little over a year ago, and I don't think that I've had a Tim on since So I feel

48:50 like in some ways you were tasked with carrying on his energy and spirit and you did not let us down So I appreciate you Tim Benches coming on today and that best of luck with everything in the carbon

49:01 credit universe Thanks so much for having me. I'm honored to be on the podcast. I hope all of our listeners will get to talk soon as well