About Us
The Project Explained
We are an international climate project based in Prague, involving people and companies from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, the USA and the UK, concerned about the concrete actions of governments and environmental organisations in the fight against global warming. For more than a decade we have been making up our minds about all the conflicting scientific reports on climate change and until now we have simplified everything as much as possible to understand the overall issue.
Let us now go through all our claims, assumptions, figures and practice. We also point out at the outset that what may be considered green may not be good for the climate and vice versa.
At the most basic level, we are saying that we as humanity cannot produce anything emission-free. If we convert everything into CO2 emissions. If we convert a coal-fired power station to gas before the end of its life, we consider it wasteful. Especially since it will end up emitting CO2 anyway if you include the gas leakage during extraction and transport. From an environmental point of view, it can be argued that burning gas versus coal is clean, with no emissions of other substances.
Paper or plastic bags? On a CO2 basis, recycled plastic wins. From an environmental point of view, it could be argued that leaked plastics contaminate nature.
The same is the case with electromobility. We will like electric cars in the city because they do not emit emissions. From a climate point of view, we don't have clean mobility, we just move the emissions elsewhere, and in reality it is more profitable to have one type of drive or the other. Given that we have and will have less and less electricity, it does not make sense to completely convert everything to electricity.
Nor are we enemies of photovoltaics. We're just saying that you have to consider the installation site. And we see a future for it offshore, where it does not cause global warming.
Our solution does not solve everything. But we can give time to the science that is clinging to fusion reactors, which are inexorably approaching. We can expect to see this Sun on Earth in commercial operation by 2050. As in space, countries around the world are able to cooperate despite political disagreements. It's just a pity that Elon Musk hasn't also signed up to the merger. At SpaceX's rocket-like, I mean work rate, this time could be halved and the giant cost cut to a tenth.
In the meantime, we must perceive the planet's reflectivity. In the meantime, we're heating it up more. But it's not expensive to do the opposite.
So much for the introduction. We can start with the numbers. We'll be rounding on purpose, you can always look up the exact numbers. Look for two basic terms: solar constant and albedo.
At any one time, the sun's radiation strikes the Earth at a near-constant energy of less than 1400 watts per square metre. Of that, a significant 300 watts interacts with the atmosphere, warming it. UV radiation, for example, reacts with the ozone layer to protect us. Infrared light also interacts significantly with the atmosphere. Clouds that we can't control can almost obscure us. In this case, they reflect some of the energy and accumulate some of it depending on their current colour. There's nothing we can do about it.
If the sky is clear, about 1100 watts are incident on the surface of the earth between the vertices, and this energy decreases further towards the poles. The oceans, which make up the majority of the surface, absorb most of the energy and are a huge reservoir.
In the case of the surface, its colour and 3D profile are very important. Snow reflects up to 90%, solar panels a maximum of 10% as well as our cities due to many reflections, large windows and asphalt roads and roofs. At the same time the calm and restless sea behaves differently. Here is another question: how much of the energy of the reflected light stays in the atmosphere on the way back to space? This question could be answered by accurately measuring a specific point in space. From the surface, we can only estimate based on measurements of illuminance and reflectivity, always to our disadvantage.
We state that from a single hectare, i.e. ten thousand square meters, 90 GWh of thermal energy can be reflected over ten years. In electricity, this is the annual consumption of twenty to thirty thousand households.
How we calculate climate offsets for CO2
We always lease the roof for ten years, with the proviso that we have to pay for its maintenance, upkeep, metering equipment and rent. Therefore, in the reflection chapter we calculate the ten-year period.
On suitable land owned by the Foundation, we plant the most massive trees on the planet, the giant sequoias. These trees can live for two to three thousand years. They start absorbing the most CO2 when they're hundreds of years old. None of us will live to see that. What compensation should a person who helped buy a plot of land and grow a small seedling into a mature tree get? We can only guess what will happen hundreds or thousands of years from now. Likewise, whether trees outside their homeland will grow to the same vigour.
We estimate that they will reach half the size of the most massive ones. We include in the certificate one tenth of what they would absorb in that case. But even in the short term, these are not small numbers. In ten years we can expect to accumulate 125 tonnes of CO2 per hectare, and this will increase as the trees grow.
So yes, we do not just write into the certificate what was absorbed in a given year. We write down what the donation has managed to cover, but not for the life of the tree, as is often the case. We appreciate that other people want to leave something so valuable with us for future generations.
So how do we deal with the fact that the equations don't work out? We issue a certificate, for example, for a lorry that has a lifetime of fifteen years. From the light reflection chapter, if it is half of the real investment, we offset it with a one-third surplus, but the other half from the planting chapter in a hundred at the earliest? The solution is hidden between the lines. Companies, but also people to whom we issue a climate neutrality certificate, have the option of offsetting their emissions by increasing the reflectivity of their roofs, at their own expense. The Foundation only installs measuring equipment on these roofs, which is a fraction of any investment we make in the Sahara. We therefore calculate the price of CO2, and will always back-calculate according to the actual measurements, so that in the end the car in question is truly neutral over its lifetime. The redwood forests will thus literally be left behind as a gift for future generations.
People ask us if it's right to plant an alien species
We don't see anything inappropriate about it. We consider redwoods to be the most important export of the USA, where they are routinely cared for by foundations. In the Czech and Slovak Republics, where we are starting, there are a number of suitable sites very similar to their natural home. They grow and thrive here, and the mature ones are protected by the state. At the same time, they are far from being an invasive species that has engulfed the Earth. Over thousands of years, billions of seeds will naturally produce a single mature tree.
A word in conclusion?
To sum up, the REESTART.org project is all about the Sun and the energy we need to harness. But again, sustainably. If we look at everything from a global perspective, some of our biggest CO2 emissions come from home heating. The further we move away from the equator, the sun emerges as a good candidate for heating. It alternates between summer and winter. Solar heating systems are therefore counted on to meet the needs of winter. Unfortunately, no one has addressed the fact that in summer these systems unnecessarily warm up their surroundings because they have nothing to heat up. A roller blind to prevent overheating would be sufficient. In the case of photovoltaics, everything is quite rightly geared towards channeling the surplus into other chemical energy. Only time will tell whether the bet on hydrogen is right. It is not easy. We still can't shake the idea that algae capable of directly producing clean gasoline or diesel is better. And those technologies exist, it's just a matter of the long term price of oil to make renewable fuels competitive. Then we don't have to damn the internal combustion engine and totally overhaul the infrastructure to something we don't have. By which we mean electricity. Going back to Elon, who we have a lot of respect for, he said about thermonuclear fusion that it was pointless to develop an artificial sun when the real one comes out every morning. But given how little efficiency and negative warming effect we can exploit it with, we ask scientists around the world who are working on it together despite the political travails not to relent and to take more examples from the development of the impossible à la SpaceX. Until then, we have no choice but to offset our emissions and accumulate carbon for Uncle Sam by Mother Nature's time-tested method for thousands of years. Thank you for your support or constructive opposition. Few people read this far these days. We appreciate it.
Each year we will inform you of the current status of all our work in an audited annual report. We are now at the beginning. We have planted the first 100 trees on the first plot of the planned 250. We have not yet been able to plant the remaining plot area for two reasons. The seedlings can be in the ground no later than the end of September before the coming winter. Unfortunately, we did not get permission to clear the remaining area of woody debris until the non-growing season of November-March. So the remaining 150 seedlings have to wait until May, when the planting season begins.