Polluters Pay To Promote Parallel Projects
June 28, 2010
No one’s figured out how to snatch money from thin air, but 30 Alberta companies recently cashed in by doing almost that: reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
From CO2 capturing in Exshaw to solar and wind power installations in 9,000 homes across the province, Alberta’s climate change fund is paying out for the first round of emission-reducing energy projects.
Launched in April 2008, the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund allows companies annually producing more than 100,000 tonnes of GHG emissions to pay $15 for every tonne over their allowed limit (companies must reduce the intensity of their emissions by 12 per cent). Companies can also buy carbon credits in the Alberta-based offset system, but the fund has proven to be a popular option: to date, it’s collected about $40 million.
Now, the province’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation is providing the first round of funding, designed to support projects that will ultimately reduce the same GHG emissions that fuel the fund.
The corporation selected 30 projects from 223 project submissions. These include $8.2 million for a Lethbridge biogas cogeneration plant (ECB Enviro North America Inc.), $3 million for a solar thermal power project (City of Medicine Hat) and $1.8 million to develop a pilot plant to produce biofuel and utilize carbon dioxide (Enerkem Inc.). But the province won’t just be seeing carbon-reducing projects that generate power.
The 30 projects run the gamut from renewable energy generation, like Calgary-based Enmax’s plan to install 9,000 wind- and solar-generation kits in Alberta homes over five years, to energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage (CCS), like a CO2 capture facility at a limestone production facility in Exshaw. It’s a slate of projects that shows the diversity of the province’s carbon mitigation efforts, and the growing interest in unconventional approaches to energy. And even if it’s not exactly magic, pulling project funding out of invisible gases still isn’t a bad trick.
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