Lara Abrams Communications

Terrapass Gets Ford On Board

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

Am very pleased with this news for the Terrapass team. I don’t think it’s been an easy haul, and they knew they needed a corporate sponsor like Ford to make the model - getting the public to contribute to green energy projects - and being able to sustain the business model — so congratulations to all.  Good work. Essentially, this is one big marketing coup for Terrpass, and hopefully, it will incentivize a much larger percentage of the population than the current 5,000 plus Terrapass members out there to participate in creating a greener economy. At the end of the day - that’s what this is about…get enough consumers to vote green with their pocket books, and industry falls in line…

Now, if you don’t know what I’m talking about — Terrapass (if you haven’t seen the sticker that says "Clean up after your car" on my car’s back bumper) has partnered with Ford…as per the Terrapass website:

Ford Motor Company and TerraPass announce Greener Miles partnership

The news just broke over Reuters. Ford Motor Company and TerraPass have a joined in a partnership to market TerraPass-branded carbon offsets to all drivers of Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury cars and trucks.

We’re calling the joint marketing program Greener Miles. You can read the Reuters scoop here, or get the official version put out by Ford’s friendly and capable PR people (when formally announced). I’m sure dozens of other versions will appear over the next few days.

We’ll be analyzing the deal ourselves from a few different angles in the days to come. For today, though, we’ll just some provide some highlights and context:

• The products we’re selling have new names and spiffy new decals, but they are otherwise unchanged. We’re still selling carbon by the ton. The same amount of carbon goes into each TerraPass, and the price remains the same.
• We’ve selected two wonderful renewable energy projects to be the first beneficiaries of the offsets sold under the Greener Miles program. The first is the Ainsworth Wind Facility in Ainsworth, Nebraska. The second is the Haubenschild dairy farm, near Princeton, Minnesota. (If you’re ever having a bad day, you should check out this slide presentation about the Haubenschild farm. It will cheer you up.)
• Ford derives no revenue from the sale of TerraPasses through the Greener Miles program. Ford is funding the program as part of their broader initiative on climate change.
• TerraPass receives both some money and some in-kind promotion from Ford to promote the Greener Miles program to Ford customers.
• The deal is exclusive for a short period. Then TerraPass is welcome to make similar arrangements with other automakers.

We’re pretty sure this deal is the first of its kind, which means we’re facing a lot of unknowns. No one at Ford or TerraPass really knows how people will react to the news, although we’re pretty sure that some will be enthusiastic, some will be critical, and many will just be confused.

For us, this day marks the culmination of a year of negotiation, months of effort designing the program, and many sleepless nights. It also comes hot on the heels of our biggest sales week ever, pushed along by the triple whammy of Earth Day, Yahoo!, and a front-page article in the New York Times. So you’ll excuse us if we retreat to the hotel bar for a little while and just stare at our hands.

Obviously we’re very excited about this opportunity to bring carbon offsets to a much larger audience, and we’ve got a bunch of interesting marketing programs in the works to help us get the word out. As I mentioned, we’ll also be using this space to provide our own thoughts on what the deal means for Ford, for TerraPass, for consumers, and for the environment.

Finally, a few word of thanks. First, thanks to the Ford team for also putting in long hours to make the deal happen, for demonstrating patience with an overeager partner, for taking a risk on a small company, and for taking a risk on a big idea. And most of all, thanks to our 5,500 TerraPass members, who have gotten us this far.

And from Reuters…

Ford to Promote Green Investments to Consumers

April 27, 2006 — By Poornima Gupta, Reuters DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. said it will give consumers concerned about harmful greenhouse emissions an opportunity to invest in clean energy projects via a new Web Site that will calculate suggested investments based on the amount of carbon dioxide produced while driving.

In a program called "Greener Miles," which is expected to be announced on Thursday, consumers can go to the Web Site to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide produced in one year of driving. The Web site will then suggest an investment linked to the cost of producing an amount of clean energy equivalent to the carbon dioxide produced.

Ford is partnering with TerraPass, a group that helps finance solar, wind and methane-driven energy projects, for the project, Niel Golightly, director of Ford’s sustainable business strategies, told Reuters in an interview.

"We know that there is a growing number of customers out there that are starting to raise questions about this whole subject of climate change and energy security… and looking for things they can do to address it," Golightly said.

The consumer contributions — ranging from $29.95 to $79.95 annually depending on the type of vehicle, amount of carbon dioxide emitted and miles traveled — will be invested in U.S.-based projects such as wind power energy or making power from dairy farm manure.

An average car produces between 10,000 pounds and 12,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, Tom Arnold, TerraPass chief environmental officer, said.

The initial projects that would benefit from contributions from Ford buyers are a wind farm in Ainsworth, Nebraska, and Haubenschild Farms near Princeton, Minnesota, which converts manure into electricity, he said.

In exchange, consumers get a sticker for their windshield verifying the offset of carbon dioxide the vehicle emits.

Ford said it has no plans to run a broad-based advertising campaign for the initiative.

Instead, Ford dealers will be given brochures on the project and consumers will be directed to the Web site from several Ford product sites, Arnold said.

Arnold said it was hard to say how many consumers will participate in the project.

Ford Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Ford, great-grandson of the company founder and a lifelong environmentalist, has made efforts to portray the automaker as an environmentally aware "green" company.

But the company and Bill Ford have often been the target of environmental groups that decry the company’s dismal fuel economy record.

Golightly said Ford is also working to improve the fuel-efficiency of its fleet, investing in alternative-fuel vehicles and working to reduce emissions from its factories.

The Greener Miles project "is a very incremental part of our overall climate change policy," Golightly said. "This is an opportunity for us to engage our consumers a bit more."

Source: Reuters 

 

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To contact Lara, please email her at lara@laraabrams.com or call 415 613 1704.