Vatican To Go Carbon Neutral, Wants To Measure Footprints Of Individual Churches

July 16, 2007

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The Vatican plans to become the first entirely carbon neutral sovereign state, and it has chosen KlimaFa ecorestoration offsets to achieve this goal. KlimaFa has created a new Vatican Climate Forest in Europe that will initially offset all of the Vatican’s CO2 emissions for this year.

Planktos/KlimaFa has further committed to work with the Vatican and the Pontifical Council of Culture to develop methods to calculate the CO2 emissions of individual Catholic churches and offer ecorestoration options to turn their carbon footprints green.

“The Holy See’s increasingly creative environmental leadership is both insightful and profound,” said Planktos CEO and KlimaFa managing director, Russ George. “Not only is the Vatican steadily reducing its carbon footprint with energy efficiency and solar power, its choice of new mixed growth forests to offset the balance of its emissions shows a deep commitment to planetary stewardship as well. It eloquently makes the point that ecorestoration is a fitting climate change solution for a culture of life.”

The new Vatican Climate Forest will be created in Hungary’s Bukk National Park under the auspices of the KlimaFa Climate Parks program. Its dimensions will be determined by the Vatican’s 2007 energy use and the success of its current emission reduction efforts.

In June, the Vatican announced that the roof of the Paul VI , 6,300-seat auditorium will be redone next year, with its cement panels replaced with photovoltaic cells.

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