New carbon offset guide

The Suzuki Foundation and Pembina Institute want you to remember that not all Carbon Offset Programs are created equal. After being bombarded with questions from customers about who has the “best” carbon offset credits, the two organizations decided to make the answers a little easier. By looking at a series of criteria, they ranked 20 notable carbon offset vendors from best to worst.

The resulting Purchasing Carbon Offsets Guide is meant to help customers decide where to put their carbon offset dollars. According to the Suzuki Foundation, the most important thing to consider is whether the offset will really help the climate.

The key criterion is what they call “addtionality.” Because there’s no extra benefit by paying for something that would have happened anyway, “additionality” ensures things like air travel are offset. Higher marks were awarded to vendors with strong “additionality.”Naturally, some vendors are upset by the results. Some of the criteria for the ranking had little to do with the quality of their carbon credits. This includes criteria such as accounting, and transparency. Those who objected said these in particular were judged unfairly.

One of the vendors most upset is the one selected as the official carbon-offset supplier of the Olympics, Vancouver-based Offsetters. They placed 11^th on the list, but the Pacific Carbon Trust recently compiled a similar list, and ranked them first.

The moral of the story? There are no easy answers. A guide may exist, but consumers are still encouraged to do their own research.

Even with carbon credits, the old maxim holds: caveat emptor.

Youngsters influence families in climate change challenge

A climate change challenge on the B.C. coast has changed how kids view their impact on the environment.

Now, they can turn it around and change how their families’ perception too. The B.C. Sustainable Energy Association Climate Change Challenge was like an eco-marathon, where students had to complete 34 environmental tasks in 30 days.

Of the 550 students participating, two won first place by accomplishing all the given tasks. The prize was a new bicycle and helmet, awarded to two first prize winners: Alexander Mayrhofer from Nanaimo; and Lindsay Richards from Gabriola Island.

One of the tasks was abstaining from meat at least once a week, a task both winners found particularly challenging. Despite this, both students claim the month of living with the environment uppermost in mind has changed their daily lives for good.

This school year, teachers in B.C. can book a Climate Change Workshop in their classrooms. The B.C. Sustainable Energy Association uses a climate change game to illustrate how even the smallest everyday decisions can have a major impact.

The workshop may even inspire their students to have a 30 day challenge of their own. This year’s participants showed how much of a difference only a month can make: both in their own lives, and the lives of their friends and families.

The take-home lesson is what some parents may not necessarily have learned while they were in school. Namely, that doing your part for the environment can become an easy part of everyday life.

If that’s not a good lesson for kids, what is?

Athletes and Students Issue Challenge to Olympics

The Olympic motto may just be adding a fourth line: Faster, Higher, Stronger…Cleaner? 

Canadians are being invited to summon their Olympian ideals and join Project Blue Sky. The goal? One billion human-powered kilometers logged before the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Games in March 2010.

It’s essentially an online carbon offset project. In conjunction with the Vancouver games, ordinary people alike are encouraged to join Canadian athletes in using Blue Sky’s widget. It logs distance walking, cycling, transit riding, hurdling – basically any travel that’s not driving or flying. 

The project was masterminded by Canadian Olympic Committee’s Athlete Council and Masters students at the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver. After consulting Offsetters Clean Technology Inc. – official Carbon Offset Supplier of the Olympics for the website’s CO2 calculations – the company joined as a sponsor.

The website is billed as a “meeting place” for athletes and participants. Like other networking sites, registration is necessary but free. You can track your favourite participating athletes, share photos, and compete in the CO2 footprint event. Like golf, smaller numbers win. 

That said, you don’t have to visit the site every time you want to add a km or two. You don’t need to register in order to submit your own man-powered kilometers, and the widget can be moved to other social networking pages.

Membership does have its privileges, though. Athlete profile pages list their favourite movies, artists, and most importantly, why they were motivated to join the Blue Sky Project.

UN focus: revive economies and protect the planet

To paraphrase Kipling: “environmentalists are environmentalists, and economists are economists; never the twain shall meet.”

There is a widespread assumption that “green” policies are, by definition, expensive. That there is a choice to be made between ecologically sound practices and profit – or at least a trade-off.  Whether that’s accurate is beside the point – perception becomes reality.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) sees the current financial crisis as an opportunity to change that equation. With climate change accelerating, droughts lengthening, forests, wetlands and species disappearing, this may be both our last and best chance to change that course.

What the world needs now, says UNEP, is a Global Green New Deal. Given the tremendous resources being channeled into propping up tottering institutions, why we aren’t using some to also trigger an overarching energy efficiency program – providing an immediate economic stimulus?

These goals don’t have to be mutually exclusive. UNEP asks, where are the jobs of tomorrow going to come from?  The same industries being rescued from bankruptcy? Consider the steel and car industries, which provide around five million jobs each. That’s not likely to increase.

So, you may ask? Consider that the world’s population is projected to increase by up to 3 billion by 2050. Those people will need jobs, too. The possibilities for income generation from green technologies needs to be further explored.

UNEP proposes heavy investment in the recycling industry and in managing natural resources and ecosystems. In turn, these eco-industries will provide services which will be integrated into the economy.

To quote another classic: the Chinese use the same symbol for “crisis” and “opportunity.” UNEP asks us to take the former and see the latter.

Toughing out climate change commitments in tough times

Have you heard? The economy is bad. So it’s time to tighten the belt, cinch the purse strings, stretch our dollars. Except wait—what about climate change? Sure it sounds good when we’re fat and happy, but what happens once the economy turns sour? Many countries are choosing to commit to the environment despite tough economic times. 

Australia has the highest per capita levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the developed world. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has set some lofty targets, planning to cut emissions by between 5% and 15% by 2020. He is also requiring industrial polluters to bid for government licences to emit carbon, which would cover 75% of Australia’s emissions.

27 countries of the European Union recently committed to reducing carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. 

China has set targets to improve its energy efficiency, Brazil is tackling deforestation and Mexico has set new emissions goals.

Scotland recently raised a pint to Mother Nature by proposing an 80% reduction in the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and addressing burgeoning shipping and aviation emissions.

In the US, emissions have actually increased by 17% since 1990. President Obama has committed to reducing them to 1990 levels by the year 2020. 

Developing countries such as Nigeria and South Africa are also making efforts to cut their countries’ emissions by 20-30% over the next 10 years. 

If leadership is about having vision and prospering in times of adversity, there are many countries which are blazing a new emissions reduction trail.

Provinces must be at the table

GHG Reductions Initiatives Forum Report 3

“If ever there was a time not to read too much into the polls, that time is now.” So said Ron Stevens, Deputy Premier of Alberta and Minister of International & Intergovernmental Relations, during a speech to a Conference Board forum on greenhouse gases.

He was commenting on recent public opinion surveys which suggest that the economy is Canadians’ “top of mind” issue, but insisted that the environment in general and climate change in particular were still key concerns in Canadians’ psyche.

“They want to see action, especially when it comes to climate change,” he said, adding that Albertans and their provincial government were clearly onside in trying to minimize their oilsands’ carbon footprint without losing the economic drive from the second-largest reserve of crude in the world.

Stevens said he has “never seen a greater need for leadership” by the federal government but that the provinces had to be partners as the debate is moved aggressively ahead in a world in which a continental climate change accord will figure prominently in how energy is provided.

While Ottawa obviously had the lead, he pointed out that the Canadian Constitution requires provincial consent when international agreements affect provinces. The climate change debate was fundamentally about energy and how best to use natural resources, both of which fell squarely within provincial legislative and regulatory jurisdiction.

The Deputy Premier agreed that provincial jurisdiction could be used more effectively in terms of the scope and pace of resource development, building codes, energy efficiency, fuel standards and environmental responsibility, and all provinces have existing frameworks for industrial pollutants. “There is much we can bring to the table.”

He said Alberta has never sought a “free pass” on climate change. “Far from it” It was the first and still only North American jurisdiction with comprehensive GHG emissions caps for large emitters and that its carbon capture and storage (CCS) investment, enshrined in law, was already paying off.

“We intend to do more; we must do more, “Stevens said. “We can’t work in isolation; we need national consensus to bring certainty to our industry and stability to our economy.”

Bodies such as the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had acknowledged CCS to be a major part of the climate change solution and that recent support by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper was encouraging.

Asked whether interprovincial consensus was possible, he said there had to be “a basket of solutions” because “there is no one solution that fits all.” As for cap-and-trade as an option for Alberta if that was the North American trend, he said it is “one of the tools in the toolbox.”

Investors are becoming less green about investing their green towards the green

The economy and the environment seem to be the two main things keeping people awake at night. So while stock market woes are causing some investors to tighten their purse strings, others are simply tightening their investment decision standards.

A number of factors, such as market trends and financial risk, influence individuals’ investment decisions, but what makes things tricky is when these factors shift into new territories. Even in the midst of a recession, the environmental movement is increasingly occupying space in the world of investing and finances. Making things even trickier is the fact there are no real universal standards that dictate how businesses should measure and disclose environmental data.

Cementing this challenge is the abundance of businesses claiming to be the greenest guys in town. Take Ebay’s recent claim for example. The company implies their green status doesn’t have to represent any recent shift in operations, saying it’s “intrinsic”. The reasoning goes: as long as people keep buying other people’s used items, that’s recycling. As well, on their Green Team website, the company outlines a number of initiatives implemented throughout their operations, such as installing solar panels and purchasing carbon offsets.

Fair enough. Increased competition for the attention of investors wooed by the corporation’s green siren call may result in the demand to substantiate claims with hard facts and figures. That’s what investors look for, right?

But, while there is no shortage of companies tooting their own green horns with a host of glowing environmental claims, investors are left to wonder, not only how much of it is greenwashing but, perhaps more importantly, what are some of the environmental risks confronting the companies vying for their investment dollars?

The reality is climate change does not just present business opportunities, but business risks as well. And investors want to know.

This reality hit home for two major oil sands companies, Chevron and Canada Natural Resources, when they landed on a Boston-based investors group’s Climate Watch List for allegedly failing to address their climate change related business risks in their reporting practices. Chevron responded by outlining their disclosure practices saying, “”Chevron has been recognized as the only U.S.-based oil company listed on the 2008 Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index for carbon disclosure practices. In addition, Chevron has been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for North America for the fourth year in a row.”

It appears the science behind climate change disclosure needs a bit of ironing out; a company that voluntarily discloses its climate change risks and opportunities through one organization, is being vilified for not disclosing such risks by another organization. Both organizations consist of institutional investors pressing for increased climate change related disclosure. Granted, one factor that contributed to Ceres putting Chevron and CNR on its Climate Watch List is the fact the companies operate in the oil sands. However, so do many other publicly traded energy companies.

Despite the ambiguities in disclosure standards, the investors’ movement toward increased climate change related financial reporting continues to pick up speed. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), for example, represents an international coalition of institutional investors. According to a recent release, in 2008, 385 investors, including 40 based in Canada, with a combined asset base of $57 trillion were signatories to the CDP’s information request. The request was sent to 3,000 of the world’s largest publicly-traded companies, including the 200 largest Canadian firms by market capitalization traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The Council of Canada, which is the Canadian partner for administering and reporting on the CDP, recently released a report claiming “The CDP provides a mechanism through which responding companies can communicate their climate change related disclosures to institutional investors and stakeholders in a standardized format.”

The CDP has companies all across the world, from Korea to Japan to Ireland, disclosing climate change related information. In Canada alone, 103 publicly-traded companies, including Chevron, responded to the CDP information request in 2008, with 85 respondents indicating that climate change presented physical risks to operations, regulatory risks or general business continuity risks. Another 90 indicated that climate change presents economic opportunities for their business.

So if you’re thinking about investing, hopefully increased information disclosure will help you sleep a little easier. While the science behind carbon disclosure, such as the creation of universally accepted environmental standards, is still evolving, organizations like the CDP are bringing investors that much closer to obtaining the information they need to make smart, environmentally conscious investment decisions.

Capturing the CCS debate

In 2008, Carbon Sequestration and Storage (CCS) became a bigger topic around the water cooler; for industry people, scientists, media, and Canadians at large. After the Alberta government’s official endorsement of the technology earlier in the year and subsequent pledge of $2 billion to advance CCS research over the summer, this was the year CCS moved into the mainstream.

The Alberta funding is part of that province’s climate change plan, which was launched by Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach in early 2008. The plan aims to cut GHG emissions in the province in half by 2050. CCS technology is expected to contribute to 70 per cent of the total 200 megatonnes slated for reduction by that time.

Even the federal government seemed keen on pushing CCS with Harper’s $240 million funding announcement for what they are describing as “the world’s first and largest CCS demonstration projects at the Boundary Dam Power Station in Estevan Saskatchewan.

Climate change solution or just a bunch of hot air?

Everyone seems to have a perspective on CCS – whether they’re members of industry investing in its development, or NGOs that are intrinsically wary of industry and government touted solutions.

Environmental groups in particular often regard CCS as an unknown technology and are hesitant to jump on the bandwagon. The Sierra Club is a case in point. To find the organization’s views, one need look no further than their Coal FAQs: “If coal is to remain a part of our energy future, it must be mined responsibly, burned cleanly and guaranteed to not worsen global warming pollution. At this time, there is no existing coal technology that meets these standards, including Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) or carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).”

The Pembina Institute, on the other hand, is cautiously supportive of CCS. “There is no one green bullet,” says executive director Marlo Raynolds who believes CCS should be employed as part of a “portfolio” of climate change solutions. Raynolds says that Pembina has taken on the stance that, because Alberta is situated on sedimentary basins, oil sands operate on a geology that lends itself well to CO2 storage. “If we were in other parts of the world where we didn’t have that storage capacity, we would need to look for other options. For us CCS is one part of the solution.”

Percolating the debate even further is the presence of online forums in which citizens of all walks share their knowledge, questions and opinions about CCS. One such debate was fomented on the Canada’s Oil Sands website, which was launched early in the summer to provide a platform for people to air their concerns about oil sand development. The industry funded initiative, dubbed “a different conversation” saw the introduction of many discussion topics, and it wasn’t long before CCS was added to the mix.

“If you look at the hydrocarbons – oil, gas, bitumen and for that matter coal, they are essentially sequestered carbon, only carbon that was sequestered millions of years ago,” writes one contributor under the alias ‘Bill.’ “I think it is perfectly logical option to ‘resequester’ this same carbon in depleted oil and gas reservoirs where it once was sequestered. It would be sequestered as CO2 rather than as CH4 or other hydrocarbons. We have simply extracted the energy from it.”

The discussion on the site ranges from potential ground water impact to individual responsibility for reduction of emissions.

CCS in depth

Another voice in the debate is that of CCS advocate Dr. Eddy Isaac, Executive Director of Alberta Energy Research Institute (AERI). While Isaac agrees with some concerns being raised – primarily the high cost required to test and implement – he regards CCS as a known technology with potential to address the emissions issue. Referring to the often cited challenge of transporting and storing the collected CO2, Isaac says it’s been happening everyday in the US for the last 30 years.

Already in a natural liquid state, companies have been pumping and transporting natural C02 from the ground as a solvent for enhanced oil recovery. A good example of this is the Weyburn-Midale CO2 Project in southeastern Saskatchewan which is home to a depleted oil reservoir containing deep underground rock formations called saline aquifiers. Transported via pipeline from a plant in Beulah North Dakota, pure streams of CO2 left over from the coal gasification process is injected into these underground formations for EOR. “The real challenge right now is being able to capture emitted CO2,” explains Isaac, adding the technology does exist, but is highly expensive to implement on the mass scale required to substantively reduce emissions. 

Another component in the equation is storage. Isaac says this is being done already, albeit on a smaller scale, as acid gas from gas plants containing a mixture of CO2 and hydrogen sulphide is regularly stored in what’s called, saline formations. According to Isaac, there are 50 projects currently underway that involve injecting acid gas into these formations, but bringing the technology into mass commercial use involves major costs that should eventually start decreasing. “We’re going a step further and saying in the long run we need to find other formations to put the CO2 in – yes we can use it for enhanced oil recovery, but in the long run we want to also just inject it and forget about it.”

But perhaps it’s not that simple. Recent research points out the energy intensive process of operating CCS technology, suggesting a new metaphor for the technology might be in order – the Ouroboros, more widely recognized as a snake eating its own tale. It is a representation of infinity or, less inspiring, the impossible or self-defeating. A recent study reveals the possibility that CCS could result in increased emissions, due to the additional energy required to power the very process that was supposed to reduce air pollution in the first place.

Says Science News, “When the researchers factored in all the “cradle to grave” pollution of a CO2-burying plant, emissions of acid rain-causing gases like nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx) were up to 40 percent greater than the total cradle-to-grave emissions of a modern plant that doesn’t capture its CO2.”

Advocates of the technology, such as Isaac, believe this isn’t necessarily the case. “The technologies used in new power plants that will capture CO2 will be based on gasification technology or Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC),” he says, adding that although plants using IGCC technology are expensive and seldom used today, the technology is suited, in many respects, to bringing emissions down to zero. “The use of this technology reduces SOx and NOx by orders of magnitude compared to conventional pulverized coal technology. So while I believe we need to do life cycle analyses, all the data I have seen indicate much lower SOx and NOx emissions.”

Another solution for the CCS energy use conundrum comes from Stephen Kaufman, Chairman of the Integrated CO2 Network (ICO2N) an industry supported carbon capture and storage (CCS) system proposed for Canada. “By undertaking CO2 capture there is a loss in plant efficiency and more energy is required for the same output,” says Kaufman. “The CO2 emissions from this additional energy use will also be captured in the majority of cases”

CCS – a question of politics

While the challenges and solutions for CCS continue being posed, the debate also veers into political territory. Should the high cost to implement CCS become the responsibility of industry or taxpayers? Such is a topic experts from all representations seem to have an opinion about as well.

“It’s subsidizing industry through taxpayer dollars. We end up paying to clean up industry’s mess.” says Jeh Custer, Northwestern Energy Campaigner with the Sierra Club. Describing the announcement as industry’s “get out of jail free card” Custer says the technology ultimately allows them to continue business as usual. “It’s an unproven technology. To think that we’re going to take carbon and put it under the ground and it will be there for hundreds or thousands of years seems over reliant on technological solutions.”

Kaufman, on the other hand, says that research from ICO2N shows large-scale CCS will not proceed if left to the market alone as the investment risks in the early years are substantial. “CCS is ideal for a public-private partnership as this approach enables industry and, both provincial and federal, government to work together to address long-term policy, financial risk-sharing and regulatory issues,” says the chairman.

“Carbon sequestration is still a relatively new and expensive process,” says Jacob Irving, Executive Director of the Oil Sands Developers Group, adding that developing the Alberta oil sands was also expensive in the beginning. But as time passed and technology advanced, the cost to develop decreased substantially. “We expect the same would be true for carbon sequestration technology but only through the construction and generation of actual projects. And that can only happen with the ongoing efforts and investment of industry alongside the support of government through initiatives such as the recently announced CCS fund.”

Meanwhile, the wheels are already steering the CCS debate from the realm of talk and into the realm of action. The Alberta Government recently announced three Alberta test wells are slated for drilling in a “ground-breaking, long-term, large-volume CO2 sequestration project,” that will reach the end of the field test phase in June 2010. As well, with $2 billion flowing up the provincial pipes, many industry players and scientists are excited by the chance to push the technology so it can be brought to mass-scale commercial use. AERI, the organization responsible for fielding applications has been short-listing those proposals that demonstrate high potential for speed of development and ability to substantively reduce GHGs through CCS technology. Full project proposals will be submitted by early 2009 and the specific allocation of monies from the $2 billion CCS fund will be determined by March 31, 2009.

At that point, expect a little more conversation at the water cooler about CCS.

Opportunity to get it right

The Conservatives in Ottawa are more determined than ever to engage the United States in pursuing coordinated energy and environmental policies which could evolve into contributing much-needed energy stability in what Environment Minister Jim Prentice calls “a very volatile world.”

He set out his priorities in a speech to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives in Toronto the morning of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th U.S. President, welcoming much-anticipated American re-engagement in multilateral climate change negotiations.

Prentice reiterated the minority administration’s desire for “an effective multilateral climate change agreement for the years ahead.” The key elements would be joint action on greenhouse gas emissions and a transition to “a larger and cleaner supply of both fuel and power.” It wouldn’t be easy because various “actors and interests” influence how much progress each federal government can achieve.

He said the Conservatives’ target of a 20% reduction in emissions from 2006 levels by 2020 is “ambitious but achievable” unlike the previous Liberal government’s unfulfilled Kyoto Protocol commitments.

As expected, the starting point remains an intensity-based performance standard rather than what Prentice called “a so-called hard cap-and-trade regime” but the latter would eventually become the order of the day as Canada gained more experience and as the international policy environment evolved.

“A cap-and-trade system will be insufficient alone to get the job done,” Prentice said. “We will need some other common instruments – like a shared target for low carbon power generation, a common bio-fuel mandate, common fuel efficiency standards, and potentially a common low carbon transportation fuel standard for North America, a standard that would seek to reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels into the future, based on emissions measured over the complete lifecycle of various fuels from production site to the tailpipe.”

The current economic downturn underscored the importance of avoiding anything which would exacerbate matters. “We will seek to ensure that federal policies are coordinated,” he said. “We want federal climate change regulations to work in tandem with tax, technology, tariff and other policies to promote timely domestic investment and offset weak U.S. demand.” He also stressed the importance of coordinated and harmonized federal-provincial policies.

A bilateral deal also meant a concerted move to reduce North American dependence on “foreign” oil. “Energy insecurity is the large and growing gorilla in the room,” Prentice said, noting that whereas the U.S. imported only 10% of its crude oil just four decades ago, it now imported 60% and faced the prospect of that rising to 80% by 2020.

“Smart grids and conservation, renewable fuels and power . . . are all important, but in an `80/20′ world, they will represent only the `20′, at least until the 2020s. It is the other 80% we have to worry about. In Europe, the `80%’ of energy insecurity means oil and natural gas. And here in North America, with our substantial natural gas reserves, the `80′ means oil.”

Prentice underscored Canada’s role in the “American energy equation” as the main U.S. source of crude, natural gas and electricity and as “an indispensable supplier” to the northern tier states.

“We’re not just a supplier; we’re a partner. . . . We have the capacity to play an even larger role in the North American energy solution. We’re the only nation in the world outside the Persian Gulf region with substantial proven oil reserves; we’re the best way to get Alaskan gas to southern markets; and we’re a country with substantial untapped natural gas deposits and clean hydropower potential – an obvious way for many border states to reduce their reliance on coal-fired power.”

How Canadian provinces measure up on greenhouse gas emissions

Canada, as a signatory nation to the Kyoto Protocol, is obligated to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels.  This is supposed to have happened by, well, now: from 2008 – 2012.  No one is pretending that’s possible.  

What’s the dilemma?  Canada signed Kyoto as a single entity, but the reality is when it comes to energy and emissions, the federal government only has so much authority.  Energy is famously, indeed even notoriously, within the purview of provincial governments.

If Canada as a whole is to even approach its Kyoto targets, all ten provinces must chart their own courses.  Can it be done?  It can in Quebec, where David Suzuki, among others, note with admiration and glee that the province has achieved a fourth consecutive year of reducing emissions.  

In this, Quebec is by far Canada’s leader.  Via measures as broad as carbon and petroleum taxes, a green fund, expanded public transit, even cutting highway speed limits, the province is showing Kyoto targets are possible.  

The rest?  Laggards?  

No other provinces have so clear a vision as Quebec’s Climate Change Action Plan, enacted in 2006. Take Alberta, for example. Emissions have increased by 36 per cent since 1990, moving the province ahead of big, industrial Ontario for the “lead” in provincial emissions.  Not per capita, mind you, but overall.  

Alberta, for its part, says it’s impossible to compare apples to oranges. It shouldn’t be held accountable for producing the energy the rest of the world (and country) eagerly consumes. Whether that’s true or not is beside the point.  

Quebec has demonstrated that real progress can be made in a short timeframe. Only two years since implementing its comprehensive (and rather ambitious) action plan, Quebec has seen measurable results.

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