How We Exceed the Standards of Carbon Neutral and Net Zero Operations

Part of the fabric of our company DNA is a deep commitment to the environment, both locally and globally.

Cascade Pacific Woodworks is a small veteran owned business.  We focus on custom pieces, and our primary medium is wood.  We have only one full-time employee, and we maintain a small footprint of a shop and office that is co-located on our home property. 

We cherish our environment, and we make sure to do our part to preserve its health, beauty, and sustainability. Like many businesses, we have facilities, equipment, and materials to help our business run. Before we began with building out our actual business, we needed to have an aspiration for what we stood for, and what was important to us. Having a carbon neutral and net zero company was one of the founding pillars of our business. Knowing that was an important priority, we could then start putting deliberate actions into place to build out the business and how we could achieve that goal from day one. It all came together here on our property in Connecticut.

While our shop is only a small part of our property, we utilize much of our 6-acres to leverage a sustainable enterprise that is a net energy producer, not consumer.  We also aim to remove more greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere than we contribute.  We do this in several ways – (1) capturing the energy of the sun, and (2) converting material bound for a landfill into a usable resource for heating, (3) cultivating a healthy and thriving forest, and (4) minimizing fuel use.

Now, it's probably worth a small discussion on exactly what is carbon neutrality and net zero emissions.

What Is It?

Being carbon neutral means having a balance between carbon emissions and carbon absorption from the atmosphere.  The two human activities that have contributed most to greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.  Here at Cascade Pacific, we’ve made sure that our model is to do the exact opposite: use a minimal amount of fossil fuels and cultivate a healthy forest around us. We also make sure to procure our woods from companies that are compliant with a sustainable forest plan.

Being net-zero is like being carbon neutral but larger in scale. It goes beyond carbon to include all greenhouse gasses to a standard of emitting less than is absorbed.  This expanded definition includes gasses like methane, nitrous oxide, and other hydrofluorocarbons.

At Cascade Pacific, we have built our business to exceed BOTH the carbon neutral and net-zero standards.

Our Journey

Energy efficiency:  Before opening our business, we invested in a 58-panel solar array on our property. We sized the array to not only cover our current usage, but also to cover future expansions in the shop.  Our system is configured to push all generated power directly to the grid.  Our power then comes into our property from the grid. Both outgoing and incoming power are metered. Every year of our operation, we have created a net surplus of energy – meaning we’ve contributed more power to the grid from our arrays than we have consumed.  For a shop running lots of equipment, we are very proud of this.

Heating: we’ve developed a novel and responsible system for heating our shop during the cold months of the year here in Connecticut.  We again decided to make an investment upfront to demonstrate our commitment to the environment.  We outfitted our facilities with the most energy efficient wood-burning appliances available.  Yes, we heat our entire facility exclusively with wood.  Our stoves are EPA rated to be the cleanest burning stoves available.  Not only do our stoves burn wood, but they also burn the smoke from the initial fire with re-burning process.  If you walked by our facility, you would have no idea we were heating with wood, we never have any visible emissions coming out of our chimneys.  Another important consideration is the source of our firewood.  It would be counterproductive if we were cutting down healthy thriving trees to heat our spaces. That is why we have developed partnerships with local tree services.  Most local tree services are left with no option but to dispose of downed trees at the local landfills.  At the landfill, trees will rot and emit CO2 and methane.  Our partnership diverts these trees from landfills and brings them to our property where we have a dedicated footprint to receive and store the wood until it is dry and ready to burn cleanly, usually about 2-3 years.  This means we never have to turn on our furnace or space heaters – we are essentially heating our facilities with material once bound for a landfill.

Sustainable materials:  we are diligent about sourcing woods for our projects.  We have partnerships with several local small sawmills.  These sawmills also get most of their trees from tree service companies – again redirecting wood from a landfill to a useful purpose.  We sometimes do projects that involve species of woods that are not local. When we need to source wood from other areas of the country, or the world, we only purchase wood from certified sustainable companies who can demonstrate prudence and care in how they harvest their lumber. Also, since our home is co-located with our shop, we do not incur transportation and commuting costs every day.  In fact, we only accumulate about 5,000 miles a year of driving.

Carbon offsetting:  This is very important to our model.  Our property is 6 acres, and we have ensured that the property remains wooded, and nothing is cleared.  With about 5 acres of forest, we are offsetting over 10 metric tons of CO2 per year, and producing 20 tons of oxygen per year, according to a study by Penn State University.  This is enough to offset driving 100,000 miles in our car per year (but we only drive 5,000 miles!) We are very diligent about being diligent stewards of our forest. We’ve brought in several experts in forestry care and arborists to regularly check on the health of our wooded ecosystem, and take measures, when necessary, to keep things vibrant and thriving.  We have also worked to make the property an arboretum, by planting dozens of beautiful and unusual specimens of trees, like rare japanese maples, ginkgo, and other beautiful species. 

Challenges and Rewards

One of the critical parts of bringing this all together was having a vision in the beginning of where we wanted to be. This allowed for financial planning, and the great logistical planning needed to get all these systems, processes, and relationships in place.  If we were to try to implement these things after the fact, it would have been more difficult, and likely more expensive.

There was a definitive up-front cost needed to make this happen.  Costs for the electrical infrastructure, costs for the heating systems and associated equipment, and costs to set up a wood splitting and drying solution.  Much of these costs have been offset by tax deductions, which helps. Also, annual costs are now much lower.  Essentially, we pay much less for electricity, and the only thing we pay for heating is maintenance to the stoves and chimney, and sweat equity in splitting, stacking, and storing firewood for each season.  This physical activity is a welcome break from the shop that serves a great purpose.

Looking Ahead

We have built a sustainable system that will likely be in place without major overhaul until I retire.  More importantly, we hope to showcase the model we have built to help inspire other businesses, big and small, to follow our lead.  The science of our climate and the direction we are headed isn’t up for much debate; we hope to help bring wider awareness of climate change, and how everyone, even at the smallest level, like our small business, can make a big difference. We also hope that by spreading the word, we can actively encourage consumers to bias their tendencies to supporting businesses like ours, who have made a direct and concrete commitment to helping stem the tide of climate change.