COFES Engineering Technology Conference eyes sustainability

March 12, 2008

Cyon Research Corporation, the host of COFES: the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software, has announced that it has partnered with TerraPass to balance out the carbon dioxide emissions of attendees’ travel to and from this year’s event. TerraPass works by funding verified clean energy and greenhouse-gas reduction projects throughout the U.S., including wind farms and biomass energy.

“We used TerraPass’ carbon calculator (http://terrapass.com/flight) to calculate the amount of carbon generated by each attendee’s flight,” reports Cyon Research CEO Brad Holtz. “At six weeks out, we’re at 80 percent of our capacity and we’ve calculated that our attendees already registered will have a direct impact of 160 tons of carbon. Teaming with TerraPass has allowed us to mitigate that impact.”

“The theme for COFES 2008 is ‘Innovation and Sustainability for Design and Engineering’ and we take it seriously. Our goal is to make a tangible contribution to sustainability and we believe that taking advantage of TerraPass’ innovative service is a good start,” Holtz adds. “In addition to the carbon offsets, we’ve initiated more than 20 specific actions in this direction. While the effect of any one of them is small, together they can make an impact.”

TerraPass’ carbon offset program provides money to projects that are directly involved in reducing the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.

“Two things impressed us about the TerraPass program,” said Dr. Joel Orr, Cyon Research’s vice-president and chief visionary. “First, their carbon offsets are current-year offsets – that is, the capture of carbon that will take place during the current year, rather than, say, over a 40-year period for a planted tree. Second, they have put in place a rigorous auditing system to guarantee that the offsets are real.”

In addition to purchasing the offsets, Cyon Research will be notifying each attendee of the amount of carbon generated by his/her travel. According to Holtz, “purchasing the offset is just the first step. The real impact will come when our attendees start considering the impact they have on the world.”

COFES 2008 is an invitation-only event and offers unparalleled opportunities for in-depth, open discussion among influential participants representing the engineering, design, manufacturing, architecture, and software industries.
www.cofes.com