Accounting Issues: Does carbon counting unfairly penalize “free culture”?
Calculating an institution's carbon footprint is an important step in creating a carbon-neutral art institution. The footprint may also be called a Greenhouse Gas Inventory (GHG Inventory) or "house balance," which is the term we came to use. The house balance involves calculating how much greenhouse gasses in CO2 equivalent (CO2e) the institution, nGbK in SALT. CLAY. ROCK.'s case, generated. Like any other museum or gallery, nGbK needs to calculate the C02 and other greenhouse gasses are released over the normal operation of the institution. Heating, lighting, and running computers all release greenhouse gasses. Formally speaking, the energy use, mobility, materials utilized, and wastestream are all a part of the EU greenhouse gas protocol that organizes methods for greenhouse gas accounting.
Our curatorial collective and nGbK management were surprised that we had to account for the climate impact of visitors' trips to the gallery. We knew that travel greatly contributes to greenhouse gasses, but our responsibility was calculated in a way we didn’t predict. nGbK charges no entrance fee, so it doesn’t directly profit from visitors. nGbK was founded in 1969 by the city of Berlin as a directly democratic, open membership organization, committed to addressing societal power structures. nGbK is a part of the free culture movement, a third place, with an open, bottom-up culture informed by democratic and social ideals.
In pursuing its mission, (and unlike many other organizations receiving Zero Fund grants,) nGbK does not charge an entrance fee. As a relatively small organization, we felt like nGbK and similar organizations were being inadvertently punished for its idealistic approach to culture. Our institution, recently relocated from Kreuzberg’s popular Kotti-Kiez to a former McDonalds right across from the major Alexanderplatz transportation hub, has open doors. Anyone can walk in, whenever, and be counted as a visitor, even if they just want to use the nice new toilets.
How any visitor arrived at the door needed to be accounted for. If they were visiting the city and coming to the gallery, we’d have to account for the climate impact of the whole trip. It would be best if they came by foot, bike, or public transportation. Entrance-charging institutions have the opportunity to incentivize green travel to their front doors with offers made by their on-line and telephone ticket sales: but with no tickets to sell, nGbK does not have this opportunity. While there are businesses that help large institutions deal with the carbon footprints of their paying customers, we did not have these incentives, and we were left on the hook for our green and democratic ideals.
When we and the few other no-entry-fee organizations highlighted this problem to the KSB, they responded. We are currently working on a solution that still asks us to account for our visitor footprint, while figuring out an accounting method responsive to our cultural ethic. The latest proposal is to calculate a percentage of visitor’s impact. All the methods under discussion utilize visitor questionnaires to track information that can be translated into carbon costs.