只是绿色的天空
It is a late afternoon in September at the world headquarters of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, in Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. For several hours, the company's senior executives have been filing in and out of the largest conference room -- the one with the massive dark wood table and plush leather chairs that's reserved for truly important events -- to quiz two visitors from a little San Francisco company called TerraPass.
Through the wall-sized window, the assembled can see that drive time has just begun on Forest Park Parkway -- traffic is moving but growing more congested. Enterprise owns 1.1 million vehicles, the largest fleet of rental cars in the world, and there's a good chance that more than a few of them are contributing to the gathering mess outside.
的确，这就是为什么企业领导人（拥有65,000名员工和大约6,000个办事处的企业领导人）正在与Terrapass会面，Terrapass是Terrapass，Terrapass是位于旧金山的14名雇员的Upstart，专门从事碳杂货店，这是一种新的工具，这是一种新的工具，可让生态意识到的消费者资助绿色能源。弥补污染行为的项目，例如飞行飞机，加热房屋或驾驶汽车。
企业一直在嘲笑几年来提供碳补偿的想法。现在，随着其所有问题的回答，已经做出了决定。公司企业通讯副总裁Pat Farrell（很快成为公司责任副总裁）将其主席拉到Terrapass业务发展副总裁Alicia Seiger旁边。他们解开笔。当他们在虚线上签名时，Terrapass的首席环境官汤姆·阿诺德（Tom Arnold）带出他的黑莓手机来拍摄照片，他立即将其发送给他的办公室。他说：“我必须与我的团队分享。”
该活动对两个组织都是历史性的。Enterprise刚刚同意将使零售客户能够抵消其租金造成的污染的计划 - 该计划承诺甚至可以使用巨大的凯迪拉克Escalade（重量超过5,000磅，每加仑的重量超过5,000英里） “碳中和。”
What's more, in an unprecedented move, Enterprise will match its customers' offset purchases dollar for dollar (up to $1 million). When the program kicks off on January 1, 2008, it will make Enterprise the first major rental car company to offer a carbon offset option in the United States. (Avis (NYSE:CAR) offers it in the far smaller European market.)
就Terrapass而言，Terrapass刚刚降落了最大的客户之一。如果成功，该计划有望将数百万驱动因素和数百万磅的二氧化碳排放量加入，以及弹射一家汽车租赁公司，所有事物，都成为生态意识公司的最高级别。
The irony, of course, is rich. But Enterprise is no stranger to rewriting the rules. Most rental car companies, for example, do the bulk of their business at the airport, renting vehicles to travelers. Enterprise has grown by opening branches in cities and suburbs, mostly serving those who need a rental while their own cars are in the shop. The strategy took the industry by surprise and sent Enterprise's fortunes soaring.
The company was founded by Jack Taylor with just seven vehicles in 1957. By the time his son Andy Taylor took over as the second CEO in 1991, Enterprise had about 100,000 vehicles and revenue nearing $1 billion. Since then, the company, which remains private and 100 percent owned by the Taylor family, has grown at an even more rapid pace: In 2007, just in time for its 50th birthday, Enterprise's fleet size passed the one million mark and revenue will hit $12 billion. In August 2007, the company purchased rivals Alamo and National. It now has an office within 15 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population.
然而，几年前，当安迪·泰勒（Andy Taylor）开始思考他的公司可能在50年之久的情况时，他很紧张。实际上，他根本不清楚公司是否会有很多公司。
为了使企业蓬勃发展，它需要在路上的汽车 - 很多。它还需要大量的燃料，随时可用，而且价格合理。最重要的是，它需要驾驶汽车本身的行为，以保持不可避免的且在社会上可接受。在像我们这样的汽车文化中，很难想象驾驶可能会变成拆卸。但是，颠覆整个行业的大规模和意外的社会和经济转变有先例。（香烟，有人吗？）
These days, any company involved with automobiles and fossil fuels is vulnerable. Several states, including New York and Vermont, have imposed tough new emission regulations, sparking lawsuits by automakers; California recently sought billions of dollars in compensation for environmental damages already sustained.
同时，消费者越来越关注全球变暖。根据皮尤研究中心（Pew Research Center）一月份的一项研究，超过四分之三的美国人认为，有可靠的证据表明地球正在变暖，从2006年6月起就提高了7个百分点。相信人类活动的份额 - 例如燃烧化石燃料 -归咎于同期41％。
The rental car industry has not had its moment in the great green glare of shame, but it's hard not to notice that Enterprise, as the owner of the world's largest fleet, would make a nice juicy target. The company, Taylor believes, needs to get out in front of the issue.
So over the past two years, Enterprise has been piecing together an ambitious, multi-pronged environmental strategy. Under the offset program, as many as 20 million customers will have the option to purchase an offset when they make reservations online or over the phone. (The offer also will be available to National and Alamo customers.)
Enterprise also has pledged to plant a million trees a year, purchase more cars that run on ethanol and other alternative fuels, and print its corporate magazine on recycled paper. If such programs are embraced by consumers, the company intends to add more. "I don't want to give you the impression that we're just about doing really good things," says Taylor. "We are not a not-for-profit. What we're doing, we're doing for the long-term sustainability of our business."
Enterprise's green efforts have their origins in a pair of events that were unrelated to each other and only tangentially related to the environment. In 2000, Enterprise was served with a class action discrimination lawsuit, brought by a group of African American employees. Two years later, the company settled for $2.3 million, admitting no wrongdoing.
尽管如此，泰勒还是决定是时候在公司建立公司责任的新时代了。他创建了一个新的执行职位，即公司责任副总裁，并要求一名名叫Mark Miller的长期雇员弄清楚企业应采取的方法。他要求帕特·法雷尔（Pat Farrell）与米勒（Miller）合作，这三个人都同意，没有专注于环境，就没有任何倡议是完整的。
As it happens, Taylor's father had recently taken a serious interest in the environment. In 2002, Jack Taylor gave $30 million to the Missouri Botanical Garden to catalog and preserve plants all over the world and was looking for other ways to have an impact. "My father is 85, and although he is in good health, he is always thinking about his legacy," says Andy Taylor, who speaks with his father every day.
So when the senior staff met with the younger Taylor to discuss plans for marking the company's 50th anniversary in 2007, a focus on the environment seemed to be in the air.
Farrell and Miller had been researching the subject and soon came across the idea of carbon offsets. Offsets had grown increasingly popular among individual eco-conscious consumers, but aside from explicitly socially conscious companies like Stonyfield Farm and Whole Foods, few corporations had embraced them. But to Farrell and Miller, the appeal was obvious. With offsets, Enterprise could let customers mitigate the emissions created by their rentals -- without requiring them to change their behavior in any other way. (See "Going Carbon Neutral")
当然，这一事实引起了环境运动中一些人的强烈批评，他们认为偏移是对污染者的内gui感机制，就像天主教会一次出售的放纵者以免除罪恶的人一样。批评家说，偏移无济于事，无法真正改变污染行为。
But dealing with prickly environmentalists wasn't the only problem. For one thing, offsets could be a tough sell. When Farrell broached the subject with people he'd run into casually in the hallway, he got a lot of blank looks. Would consumers even get it? And speaking of customers, was it really such a great idea to remind customers that they were engaging in a carbon emitting, global warming act when they rented a car? Who would administer the program? The offset market was fairly new, with few established players.
但是最大的问题是：偏移将是客户可以购买和增加租金的其他东西，例如滑雪架或GPS。企业不会直接支付的东西。法雷尔（Farrell）担心这看起来像是企业要求其客户为公司的环境影响付出代价。法雷尔说：“我不希望它看起来像我们在等待消费者简单地为我们写一张支票。”Enterprise想对其燃气，污染的车队做些事情。然而，弄清楚什么比预期的要困难得多。
Enterprise decided to put the offset program on hold and shifted its attention to other projects, most notably fleet efficiency. The company already had 3,000 hybrids on the road. Matt Darrah, senior vice president of North American operations and the man responsible for the company's relationships with auto manufacturers, let his contacts know that Enterprise wanted to do more.
The company, he said, would be willing try any vehicle with a new, fuel efficient alternative technology. Because many people treat a car rental as a kind of extended test drive for their next vehicle purchase, this could be a way for manufacturers to get new technology out in front of potential buyers.
In 2006, Enterprise made its first significant purchase: 41,000 flex fuel vehicles, most of them from General Motors, that can burn either gasoline or ethanol. The cars were placed at branches located near filling stations that sold ethanol. Enterprise created in-car marketing materials, with maps showing the location of the gas stations, and trained staffers to encourage renters to fill the tanks with ethanol instead of regular gasoline. "We'll do the same for hydrogen, fuel cells, whatever comes next," says Darrah.
环境行为也以其他方式在企业中占据。例如，在2006年，与美国森林服务局合作的Arbor Day Foundation呼吁捐款。距离企业成立50周年不到一年，安迪·泰勒（Andy Taylor）是公共非营利私人联盟的忠实信徒，他承诺在未来50年内为种植5000万棵树杆捐款5000万美元。
Separately, the Taylor family contributed $25 million to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis to create the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels, with the mission of finding new plant-based fuels.
同时，在洛杉矶，格雷格·斯图布尔菲尔德（Greg Stubblefield），企业在加利福尼亚和夏威夷的业务负责人（他现在经营国家和阿拉莫师），接到了一个名为Terrapass的小装备的有趣电话。Stubblefield始终可以听到有关环境举措的消息，因为加利福尼亚市场对该主题特别敏感。
碰巧的是，回到圣路易斯，Farrell又看了偏移。自从他提出这个想法以来，几乎没有一年过去了，但是这个概念引起了很大的兴趣。阿尔·戈尔（Al Gore）的一个不便真相已经触及了屏幕，媒体嗡嗡作响。即使是像滚石乐队和Coldplay这样的艺术家，也开始使用偏移来中和碳排放。Farrell正在研究潜在的供应商，而Terrapass不断出现。他打电话给Stubblefield，并要求他检查一下。
Stubblefield去了旧金山，他学到的东西很感兴趣。Terrapass由2004年沃顿院校毕业生建立，创建了一种方法来计算消费者在开车，飞行，飞行或暖气或冷却房屋时产生的碳排放量，以及对绿色动力进行多少投资来中和。那些排放。该公司认为需要9.95美元才能抵消2,500磅的二氧化碳，这大约是航空公司乘客在6,000英里的航班上负责的。
该公司与三种类型的绿色能源项目合作：风电场，“牛电”（从牛粪中收获甲烷，并用来发电机将电力回到电网中），并捕获垃圾填埋场的排放。像大多数人一样，Stubblefield尤其受到牛粪解决方案的挠痒痒。他一听到了，他就会响起法雷尔（Farrell）给他一个生物质的耳朵。
Stubblefield还批准了一个小型项目。企业在加利福尼亚有一家VanPool业务。Terrapass提供了为现有的VanPools提供免费的碳补偿，并将其出售给新的VanPools的驾驶员。Terrapass的汤姆·阿诺德（Tom Arnold）说：“我们想证明我们可以在做更冒险的事情之前一起工作。”
Stubblefield was excited by the TerraPass deal and wanted to go further. He suggested a pilot project, offering offsets to renters in California. But when Farrell checked with the company's IT staff, he learned that creating the infrastructure to handle the carbon offset logistics for a market the size of California was a huge project. From an IT standpoint, the company might as well go nationwide from the get-go.
Were consumers ready for something so ambitious? The company surveyed consumers and was surprised by the response. Not only were consumers aware of carbon offsets, 45 percent said they were either "a little" or "a lot" more likely to rent from a company that offered them. "It moved the needle," says Holly Campbell, a vice president of marketing.
就Terrapass而言，它一直在试图确定构建程序的最佳方法。该公司没有计算每种租金的成本，而是研究了企业上一年的总排放量，并确定它可以通过向客户收取每次租金额外费用约1美元来抵消该金额。碰巧的是，有36％的消费者表示，他们“很可能”为碳偏移支付1美元。似乎该计划不会疏远租房者。实际上，它可能会增强企业的品牌。
2007年5月19日，法雷尔正式向泰勒家族介绍了这一想法。他获得了初步点头。
But the plan still had to be approved by Pam Nicholson, the company's COO. He scheduled a meeting. "It sounded interesting to me," says Nicholson. But she was worried. Enterprise likes to boast that it can get a customer into a car in seven to 10 minutes. Would an offset program "fit into the process of how we do business?" Nicholson wondered. Would it overwhelm customers when what they really want is to be on their way?
Nicholson presented Farrell with other concerns, as well. How would the options be woven into the rental contract? Could IT handle it? Was there a clear, concise marketing plan? "Every box had to be checked or we couldn't do it," she says.
Nicholson and Farrell decided to start slowly, making the offset option available only to customers who book their rentals themselves, either through the company's national reservation center via an 800 phone number, or through the company's website. The move will reduce the number of rentals that would have a carbon offset available, and hence the program's scope, since rentals that go through the reservation center or the website account for just one-third of the company's total business. (The rest are paid for by a third party, either a corporate partner or an insurance company paying for a rental while a car is being repaired.)
By August, Farrell had addressed all of Nicholson's concerns and brought the completed idea back to Andy Taylor. Taylor called up his sister Jo Ann, who runs the family's foundation, and they chatted about the program. He was troubled by the idea that offsets were something that customers would be paying for and concerned, he says, that it would seem "like we were just doing this for commercial reasons." Jo Ann's answer: Get the company to match the carbon offsets, up to $1 million, roughly the number of cars in Enterprise's fleet. Soon thereafter, the first contracts between TerraPass and Enterprise were signed.
该发布会定于2008年1月1日。就对环境的意义而言，一个后面的计算表明，如果只有100,000个客户购买Terrapass，他们将抵消1200万磅的二氧化碳在大气中（如果您考虑企业的比赛，则为2400万英镑）。这相当于将大约2,000个丰田花冠带走。
有很多不确定性。该公司仍在弄清楚它将支持哪些绿色能源项目。实际上有多少客户会购买偏移量？企业仅将其提供给仅三分之一的客户而受到批评？泰勒说：“我们的承诺是一年。”“然后，我们将退后一步，看看客户对此有何评价。他们可能不想要它，或者我们可能必须加强它。”
同时，泰勒（Taylor）继续推动他的团队为他带来更多与环境有关的计划。泰勒说：“不会有一枚魔术子弹。重要的是，公司最重要的是。
泰勒说：“对我们来说，关于全球变暖是否问题的论点已经结束。”“这是我们面临的一个非常艰巨的挑战。”
艾莉森·斯坦·威尔纳（Alison Stein Wellner）是一家公司的撰稿人。本文最初出现在Inc.杂志上。有关Inc的Eco-Aftvantage覆盖范围的更多信息，请访问Inc.com/green, and don't miss these articles and slideshows:Green Myths Revealed;绿色小动物：节能技术;Inc.年度最佳资本家;Everybody Wants to Save the World。
Through the wall-sized window, the assembled can see that drive time has just begun on Forest Park Parkway -- traffic is moving but growing more congested. Enterprise owns 1.1 million vehicles, the largest fleet of rental cars in the world, and there's a good chance that more than a few of them are contributing to the gathering mess outside.
的确，这就是为什么企业领导人（拥有65,000名员工和大约6,000个办事处的企业领导人）正在与Terrapass会面，Terrapass是Terrapass，Terrapass是位于旧金山的14名雇员的Upstart，专门从事碳杂货店，这是一种新的工具，这是一种新的工具，可让生态意识到的消费者资助绿色能源。弥补污染行为的项目，例如飞行飞机，加热房屋或驾驶汽车。
企业一直在嘲笑几年来提供碳补偿的想法。现在，随着其所有问题的回答，已经做出了决定。公司企业通讯副总裁Pat Farrell（很快成为公司责任副总裁）将其主席拉到Terrapass业务发展副总裁Alicia Seiger旁边。他们解开笔。当他们在虚线上签名时，Terrapass的首席环境官汤姆·阿诺德（Tom Arnold）带出他的黑莓手机来拍摄照片，他立即将其发送给他的办公室。他说：“我必须与我的团队分享。”
该活动对两个组织都是历史性的。Enterprise刚刚同意将使零售客户能够抵消其租金造成的污染的计划 - 该计划承诺甚至可以使用巨大的凯迪拉克Escalade（重量超过5,000磅，每加仑的重量超过5,000英里） “碳中和。”
What's more, in an unprecedented move, Enterprise will match its customers' offset purchases dollar for dollar (up to $1 million). When the program kicks off on January 1, 2008, it will make Enterprise the first major rental car company to offer a carbon offset option in the United States. (Avis (NYSE:CAR) offers it in the far smaller European market.)
就Terrapass而言，Terrapass刚刚降落了最大的客户之一。如果成功，该计划有望将数百万驱动因素和数百万磅的二氧化碳排放量加入，以及弹射一家汽车租赁公司，所有事物，都成为生态意识公司的最高级别。
The irony, of course, is rich. But Enterprise is no stranger to rewriting the rules. Most rental car companies, for example, do the bulk of their business at the airport, renting vehicles to travelers. Enterprise has grown by opening branches in cities and suburbs, mostly serving those who need a rental while their own cars are in the shop. The strategy took the industry by surprise and sent Enterprise's fortunes soaring.
The company was founded by Jack Taylor with just seven vehicles in 1957. By the time his son Andy Taylor took over as the second CEO in 1991, Enterprise had about 100,000 vehicles and revenue nearing $1 billion. Since then, the company, which remains private and 100 percent owned by the Taylor family, has grown at an even more rapid pace: In 2007, just in time for its 50th birthday, Enterprise's fleet size passed the one million mark and revenue will hit $12 billion. In August 2007, the company purchased rivals Alamo and National. It now has an office within 15 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population.
然而，几年前，当安迪·泰勒（Andy Taylor）开始思考他的公司可能在50年之久的情况时，他很紧张。实际上，他根本不清楚公司是否会有很多公司。
为了使企业蓬勃发展，它需要在路上的汽车 - 很多。它还需要大量的燃料，随时可用，而且价格合理。最重要的是，它需要驾驶汽车本身的行为，以保持不可避免的且在社会上可接受。在像我们这样的汽车文化中，很难想象驾驶可能会变成拆卸。但是，颠覆整个行业的大规模和意外的社会和经济转变有先例。（香烟，有人吗？）
These days, any company involved with automobiles and fossil fuels is vulnerable. Several states, including New York and Vermont, have imposed tough new emission regulations, sparking lawsuits by automakers; California recently sought billions of dollars in compensation for environmental damages already sustained.
同时，消费者越来越关注全球变暖。根据皮尤研究中心（Pew Research Center）一月份的一项研究，超过四分之三的美国人认为，有可靠的证据表明地球正在变暖，从2006年6月起就提高了7个百分点。相信人类活动的份额 - 例如燃烧化石燃料 -归咎于同期41％。
The rental car industry has not had its moment in the great green glare of shame, but it's hard not to notice that Enterprise, as the owner of the world's largest fleet, would make a nice juicy target. The company, Taylor believes, needs to get out in front of the issue.
So over the past two years, Enterprise has been piecing together an ambitious, multi-pronged environmental strategy. Under the offset program, as many as 20 million customers will have the option to purchase an offset when they make reservations online or over the phone. (The offer also will be available to National and Alamo customers.)
Enterprise also has pledged to plant a million trees a year, purchase more cars that run on ethanol and other alternative fuels, and print its corporate magazine on recycled paper. If such programs are embraced by consumers, the company intends to add more. "I don't want to give you the impression that we're just about doing really good things," says Taylor. "We are not a not-for-profit. What we're doing, we're doing for the long-term sustainability of our business."
Enterprise's green efforts have their origins in a pair of events that were unrelated to each other and only tangentially related to the environment. In 2000, Enterprise was served with a class action discrimination lawsuit, brought by a group of African American employees. Two years later, the company settled for $2.3 million, admitting no wrongdoing.
尽管如此，泰勒还是决定是时候在公司建立公司责任的新时代了。他创建了一个新的执行职位，即公司责任副总裁，并要求一名名叫Mark Miller的长期雇员弄清楚企业应采取的方法。他要求帕特·法雷尔（Pat Farrell）与米勒（Miller）合作，这三个人都同意，没有专注于环境，就没有任何倡议是完整的。
As it happens, Taylor's father had recently taken a serious interest in the environment. In 2002, Jack Taylor gave $30 million to the Missouri Botanical Garden to catalog and preserve plants all over the world and was looking for other ways to have an impact. "My father is 85, and although he is in good health, he is always thinking about his legacy," says Andy Taylor, who speaks with his father every day.
So when the senior staff met with the younger Taylor to discuss plans for marking the company's 50th anniversary in 2007, a focus on the environment seemed to be in the air.
Farrell and Miller had been researching the subject and soon came across the idea of carbon offsets. Offsets had grown increasingly popular among individual eco-conscious consumers, but aside from explicitly socially conscious companies like Stonyfield Farm and Whole Foods, few corporations had embraced them. But to Farrell and Miller, the appeal was obvious. With offsets, Enterprise could let customers mitigate the emissions created by their rentals -- without requiring them to change their behavior in any other way. (See "Going Carbon Neutral")
当然，这一事实引起了环境运动中一些人的强烈批评，他们认为偏移是对污染者的内gui感机制，就像天主教会一次出售的放纵者以免除罪恶的人一样。批评家说，偏移无济于事，无法真正改变污染行为。
But dealing with prickly environmentalists wasn't the only problem. For one thing, offsets could be a tough sell. When Farrell broached the subject with people he'd run into casually in the hallway, he got a lot of blank looks. Would consumers even get it? And speaking of customers, was it really such a great idea to remind customers that they were engaging in a carbon emitting, global warming act when they rented a car? Who would administer the program? The offset market was fairly new, with few established players.
但是最大的问题是：偏移将是客户可以购买和增加租金的其他东西，例如滑雪架或GPS。企业不会直接支付的东西。法雷尔（Farrell）担心这看起来像是企业要求其客户为公司的环境影响付出代价。法雷尔说：“我不希望它看起来像我们在等待消费者简单地为我们写一张支票。”Enterprise想对其燃气，污染的车队做些事情。然而，弄清楚什么比预期的要困难得多。
Enterprise decided to put the offset program on hold and shifted its attention to other projects, most notably fleet efficiency. The company already had 3,000 hybrids on the road. Matt Darrah, senior vice president of North American operations and the man responsible for the company's relationships with auto manufacturers, let his contacts know that Enterprise wanted to do more.
The company, he said, would be willing try any vehicle with a new, fuel efficient alternative technology. Because many people treat a car rental as a kind of extended test drive for their next vehicle purchase, this could be a way for manufacturers to get new technology out in front of potential buyers.
In 2006, Enterprise made its first significant purchase: 41,000 flex fuel vehicles, most of them from General Motors, that can burn either gasoline or ethanol. The cars were placed at branches located near filling stations that sold ethanol. Enterprise created in-car marketing materials, with maps showing the location of the gas stations, and trained staffers to encourage renters to fill the tanks with ethanol instead of regular gasoline. "We'll do the same for hydrogen, fuel cells, whatever comes next," says Darrah.
环境行为也以其他方式在企业中占据。例如，在2006年，与美国森林服务局合作的Arbor Day Foundation呼吁捐款。距离企业成立50周年不到一年，安迪·泰勒（Andy Taylor）是公共非营利私人联盟的忠实信徒，他承诺在未来50年内为种植5000万棵树杆捐款5000万美元。
Separately, the Taylor family contributed $25 million to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis to create the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels, with the mission of finding new plant-based fuels.
同时，在洛杉矶，格雷格·斯图布尔菲尔德（Greg Stubblefield），企业在加利福尼亚和夏威夷的业务负责人（他现在经营国家和阿拉莫师），接到了一个名为Terrapass的小装备的有趣电话。Stubblefield始终可以听到有关环境举措的消息，因为加利福尼亚市场对该主题特别敏感。
碰巧的是，回到圣路易斯，Farrell又看了偏移。自从他提出这个想法以来，几乎没有一年过去了，但是这个概念引起了很大的兴趣。阿尔·戈尔（Al Gore）的一个不便真相已经触及了屏幕，媒体嗡嗡作响。即使是像滚石乐队和Coldplay这样的艺术家，也开始使用偏移来中和碳排放。Farrell正在研究潜在的供应商，而Terrapass不断出现。他打电话给Stubblefield，并要求他检查一下。
Stubblefield去了旧金山，他学到的东西很感兴趣。Terrapass由2004年沃顿院校毕业生建立，创建了一种方法来计算消费者在开车，飞行，飞行或暖气或冷却房屋时产生的碳排放量，以及对绿色动力进行多少投资来中和。那些排放。该公司认为需要9.95美元才能抵消2,500磅的二氧化碳，这大约是航空公司乘客在6,000英里的航班上负责的。
该公司与三种类型的绿色能源项目合作：风电场，“牛电”（从牛粪中收获甲烷，并用来发电机将电力回到电网中），并捕获垃圾填埋场的排放。像大多数人一样，Stubblefield尤其受到牛粪解决方案的挠痒痒。他一听到了，他就会响起法雷尔（Farrell）给他一个生物质的耳朵。
Stubblefield还批准了一个小型项目。企业在加利福尼亚有一家VanPool业务。Terrapass提供了为现有的VanPools提供免费的碳补偿，并将其出售给新的VanPools的驾驶员。Terrapass的汤姆·阿诺德（Tom Arnold）说：“我们想证明我们可以在做更冒险的事情之前一起工作。”
Stubblefield was excited by the TerraPass deal and wanted to go further. He suggested a pilot project, offering offsets to renters in California. But when Farrell checked with the company's IT staff, he learned that creating the infrastructure to handle the carbon offset logistics for a market the size of California was a huge project. From an IT standpoint, the company might as well go nationwide from the get-go.
Were consumers ready for something so ambitious? The company surveyed consumers and was surprised by the response. Not only were consumers aware of carbon offsets, 45 percent said they were either "a little" or "a lot" more likely to rent from a company that offered them. "It moved the needle," says Holly Campbell, a vice president of marketing.
就Terrapass而言，它一直在试图确定构建程序的最佳方法。该公司没有计算每种租金的成本，而是研究了企业上一年的总排放量，并确定它可以通过向客户收取每次租金额外费用约1美元来抵消该金额。碰巧的是，有36％的消费者表示，他们“很可能”为碳偏移支付1美元。似乎该计划不会疏远租房者。实际上，它可能会增强企业的品牌。
2007年5月19日，法雷尔正式向泰勒家族介绍了这一想法。他获得了初步点头。
But the plan still had to be approved by Pam Nicholson, the company's COO. He scheduled a meeting. "It sounded interesting to me," says Nicholson. But she was worried. Enterprise likes to boast that it can get a customer into a car in seven to 10 minutes. Would an offset program "fit into the process of how we do business?" Nicholson wondered. Would it overwhelm customers when what they really want is to be on their way?
Nicholson presented Farrell with other concerns, as well. How would the options be woven into the rental contract? Could IT handle it? Was there a clear, concise marketing plan? "Every box had to be checked or we couldn't do it," she says.
Nicholson and Farrell decided to start slowly, making the offset option available only to customers who book their rentals themselves, either through the company's national reservation center via an 800 phone number, or through the company's website. The move will reduce the number of rentals that would have a carbon offset available, and hence the program's scope, since rentals that go through the reservation center or the website account for just one-third of the company's total business. (The rest are paid for by a third party, either a corporate partner or an insurance company paying for a rental while a car is being repaired.)
By August, Farrell had addressed all of Nicholson's concerns and brought the completed idea back to Andy Taylor. Taylor called up his sister Jo Ann, who runs the family's foundation, and they chatted about the program. He was troubled by the idea that offsets were something that customers would be paying for and concerned, he says, that it would seem "like we were just doing this for commercial reasons." Jo Ann's answer: Get the company to match the carbon offsets, up to $1 million, roughly the number of cars in Enterprise's fleet. Soon thereafter, the first contracts between TerraPass and Enterprise were signed.
该发布会定于2008年1月1日。就对环境的意义而言，一个后面的计算表明，如果只有100,000个客户购买Terrapass，他们将抵消1200万磅的二氧化碳在大气中（如果您考虑企业的比赛，则为2400万英镑）。这相当于将大约2,000个丰田花冠带走。
有很多不确定性。该公司仍在弄清楚它将支持哪些绿色能源项目。实际上有多少客户会购买偏移量？企业仅将其提供给仅三分之一的客户而受到批评？泰勒说：“我们的承诺是一年。”“然后，我们将退后一步，看看客户对此有何评价。他们可能不想要它，或者我们可能必须加强它。”
同时，泰勒（Taylor）继续推动他的团队为他带来更多与环境有关的计划。泰勒说：“不会有一枚魔术子弹。重要的是，公司最重要的是。
泰勒说：“对我们来说，关于全球变暖是否问题的论点已经结束。”“这是我们面临的一个非常艰巨的挑战。”
艾莉森·斯坦·威尔纳（Alison Stein Wellner）是一家公司的撰稿人。本文最初出现在Inc.杂志上。有关Inc的Eco-Aftvantage覆盖范围的更多信息，请访问Inc.com/green, and don't miss these articles and slideshows:Green Myths Revealed;绿色小动物：节能技术;Inc.年度最佳资本家;Everybody Wants to Save the World。