You know we’ve focused since our inception on providing the highest quality carbon removal offsets, while maximizing the impact you as a user get for every dollar spent on our platform.
Unfortunately, to maintain the same high-quality carbon removal offsets we’ve provided in the past, we’re being forced to pay much higher prices than we were just months ago–in some cases, the costs of the carbon removal offsets we buy have gone up by as much as 50%!
As a result of our higher costs, you’ll see higher prices in Hazel starting today. We anticipate this being the only price increase we’ll need to do for 2022, but that will depend on how the market for the rest of the year evolves.
If you’re on a subscription with us:
Hazel provides the option to select “Monthly Purchase” at checkout to make your purchase a monthly subscription. If you’re on a subscription plan like this, we will not be raising your prices. You made a commitment to support climate action through Hazel, and we want to honor your commitment–even though it means we’ll be losing money on it. (Note that any new subscriptions will be at the new pricing).
Additional details about this change:
First, we didn’t want to deviate from the high-quality carbon removal offsets we’ve been offering. One of the things that makes Hazel unique is that, unlike many sources, we’re 100% focused on supporting projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere. Many carbon offset projects are focused on avoidance–effectively “pay me or I’ll pollute”–and these types of offsets are much cheaper.
While we think there’s a role for those projects, with Hazel we wanted to focus instead on selling offsets that come from actual capture and removal of carbon from the atmosphere, whether by:
- Conservation Efforts: Where the preserved ecosystems sequester additional carbon every year;
- Reforestation: Where newly planted trees capture and store carbon;
- Regenerative Farming: Where a change in farming practices results in fields that capture and store additional carbon;
- Technology & Other: Where engineered or other cutting-edge approaches are used to capture carbon.
These projects are in the most demand, however, and are uniformly raising prices, which impacts our business.
In the future, this may mean that our project mix, for users who pick “Support All Projects” in Hazel, may change. Although prices are rising everywhere, not all projects are rising at the same rate or by the same amount. There may be an opportunity to mix lower-priced removal projects with higher priced ones so that the average price remains low–while still supporting multiple projects. Right now, users who pick “Support All Projects” in Hazel get an equal amount of all of our projects–changing this mix may enable us to support pricier solutions in the future. (Obviously if you pick a specific project to support, 100% of your support goes to that project). Stay tuned!
We’re also going to be aggressively shopping for new projects that provide the same level of impact & reporting we require, but at a more competitive price. If you run or know of a project you’d like to see in Hazel, let us know!
In future weeks, we may introduce new Impact product options in Hazel at lower price points. While these will also represent a smaller amount of carbon captured, we want to provide an option for users that cannot afford to fund a larger impact on the climate.
We’ll also be raising the amount of Hazel Coins you receive to reflect our new prices. Why does that matter? It doesn’t… yet. But trust me, you’re going to want as many Hazel Coins as you can get in your account in a few weeks…
Finally…
I know we probably could have raised prices and not said anything, and our new prices would have gone largely unnoticed. That would have been a jerky move though, and we’re committed to being better people, and a better business, than that. We wanted to be as transparent with you as possible because that’s the right thing to do. We know higher prices aren’t something anyone wants to hear, but we hope you’ll understand our need to change our prices. –Ed
