Polluters Pay To Promote Parallel Projects

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.

Via CanWest

Powering Canadian communities

More than 80 per cent of Canadians live in urban centres, a number that’s been steadily increasing since records began in 1851. That leaves most of our attention focused on cities, especially when it comes to energy. Where the people live, the energy will follow.

But in a public environment where we’re increasingly concerned about the costs of our power, both financial and environmental, we can’t forget about our rural communities either. Fortunately, local governments and the communities themselves are already paying attention.

At 3.3 inhabitants per square kilometre, in a total area of almost 10 million square kilometres, Canada is one of the least densely populated places on Earth. That leaves us trying to stretch 160,000 kilometres of high voltage lines between our power plants and our major urban centres, an enormous grid that still isn’t large enough to reach our most remote communities. Whether these communities are isolated by distance, a harsh climate, unyielding geography or (usually) some combination of the three, the result is that they have to generate their own power. And, as it happens, generating your own power tends to be a fairly dirty business.

Diesel generators have been the go-to solution for small communities’ power needs for years — they provide a dependable source of power and can be built on a relatively small scale, or they can purchased and imported. But while these generators allow remote communities to stay powered without staying connected to the grid, they’re also using fuel whose carbon emissions are under increasing scrutiny.

In Northwest Territories, for example, the territory’s 43,000 citizens (spread across almost 1.2 million square kilometres) get most of their power from 25 diesel generating facilities dotted in communities. But under Northwest Territories’ energy strategy, Community Energy Plans would be implemented across the territory by 2011, encouraging a more sustainable approach to each community’s power generation.

One of the most practical methods of improving remote communities’ energy use has been cogeneration. By harnessing the heat that is generally lost in facilities only designed to generate electricity, cogeneration plants are able to provide both heat and electricity, requiring between 10 and 30 per cent less fuel.

Given that communities in northern climates also rely on carbon-intensive heating oil for their heating, it’s not hard to see why cogeneration plants would reduce both the financial and environmental costs of energy. And it isn’t only northern communities changing the way they use energy.

BC’s Bioenergy Network, for example, has already begun awarding contracts for wood waste cogeneration plants under their BC Bioenergy Strategy. And the Ontario Government, like many other provincial governments, is encouraging agricultural operations to consider wind and other alternative sources of generation.

And communities are still actively seeking out new opportunities to generate their own power in more cost-effective and environmentally responsible ways.

From April 21 to 22, the Town of Cochrane, Ontario (population: less than 6,000) will be hosting its Energize Your Community Conference, a showcase for communities hoping to encourage green community energy initiatives. Featuring talks from organizations like Nipissing University’s Biomass Innovation Centre and the Ontario Power Authority, the conference bills itself as a chance for like-minded communities to network and learn. Its scale is appropriately modest, but if you’re a community interested in joining the conversation on changing energy use in Canada’s, go ahead and drop them a line holly.touchette@town.cochrane.on.ca. After all, in a country where only 20 per cent live outside of cities, communities need to stick together.