Emergi

Interview with founder Eric Scheier

Q & A

Tell us about the issue you want to tackle with your social venture.

We do not live in a sustainable society. The systems that allow us to live “normally” are having negative side-effects, from contributing to poor working conditions where our goods are made, to facilitating the spread of disease, to irreversibly changing the temperature of the entire earth. 

 

Emergi (rhymes with “energy”) is a platform that allows individuals to collectively invest in impactful projects that provide sustainable benefits. Through Emergi, anyone can take climate action by going carbon neutral for five dollars per month.  We reinvest these funds into sustainable initiatives like renewable energy development and poverty alleviation around the world and in our backyards.  Anyone can join us as emergi.green.

Why did you feel compelled to take on that issue?

While backpacking in the Appalachian Mountains as a child I had the realization that nature and humanity are inseparable. This experience left me with a curiosity about the relationship between humans and our environment that continues to this day. When my mother’s childhood home in New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina a few years later, followed shortly by the global financial crisis, it crystalized a growing feeling that our society was misaligned with the environment in a significant way. I have been on a mission to create a sustainable world ever since.

What inspired you to launch your social venture through CUBE at the Campus Y?

The Campus Y is the social impact hub at UNC. Its values and goals make it the most fertile place for a venture like Emergi to grow at this early stage. CUBE started while I was an undergraduate at UNC, but I was too close to graduation to participate and did not have enough experience to truly understand what Emergi was going to be.  When I returned to UNC for graduate school last Fall, the Campus Y and CUBE were on the top of my list of groups to work with to develop Emergi. CUBE and the Campus Y can provide the mentorship, validation, access, and resources required to make Emergi not only a reality, but a success that can scale throughout and beyond campus.  

What do you hope to achieve during your CUBE residency?

In 2019 we proved the concept for Emergi by inviting friends and family to become carbon neutral, preventing over 200,000 pounds of pollution from entering the atmosphere.  With CUBE we want to 10x this to prevent 2 million pounds of pollution throughout the UNC community while continuing to improve the platform.

 

What social impact do you hope to have with your venture?

In short, Emergi is designed to solve climate change on the way to creating a sustainable future for all.  With hard work and luck, we can change how people value energy and fundamentally reorient the pursuit of progress from a winner-take-all game into a cooperative endeavor that benefits everyone. As the energy embodied in everything moves from dirty, finite, and inefficient sources to clean, renewable, and affordable ones, Emergi will help facilitate a just transition toward a society aligned with nature.

What motivates you to be a student entrepreneur?

I believe that entrepreneurship is the most effective way to have an impact, and that combining entrepreneurship with the scientific method is the most effective way to have a positive impact. I am a student entrepreneur in order to create the bridge between research and development that needs to exist if we are going to create scalable solutions that actually make the world a better place.  In one way or another I will always be a student.