Scott Meister was spending too much on natural gas. In 2005, Meister Cheese, the Muscoda (Wis.) company he co-owns, paid about $500,000 for gas, thanks to spikes in the price of energy following Hurricane Katrina. Meister needed the fuel for the furnaces used to make his all-natural cheddar, Colby, and jack cheeses, but it was getting too expensive for his $20 million business.
Near Meister's manufacturing facility, however, is a family-run sawmill that produces wood-chip waste. Meister and the sawmill owner had a bright idea: Why not reengineer Meister's boilers to efficiently burn wood chip waste instead of natural gas? They did, and two years later Meister is getting ready to sell fuel savings, in the form of carbon credits, of about $400,000 per year on the Chicago Climate Exchange. "The driving factors were social responsibility and economics," says Meister.
Meister, like an increasing number of entrepreneurs, wants to shrink his carbon footprint, or the amount of greenhouse gases his company produces. To do that, a business must reduce its carbon dioxide and other emissions. Or it must buy carbon credits—which are supposed to denote the conservation of damaging gases by another business—or both. Conservation Services Group, a Westborough (Mass.) aggregator that helps small businesses buy and sell credits, says it has received 50% more requests for proposals from small companies this year than it did last year.
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