| Sourced From |
Fredericton Region Solid Waste Commission has met a rigourous international accreditation process that will allow it to become the first landfill in Canada to sell verified carbon credits on the BlueRegistry.
The landfill generates a now measurable 30,000 and 50,000 carbon credits annually. The credits have a monetary value that could potentially hit a financial high of between $15 and $20.
Even at lower sale prices, the landfill will still recover significant dollars, said solid waste commission general manager and CEO Gordon Wilson.
The landfill will use CantorCO2e of San Francisco, Calif., to broker the credits to potential corporate purchasers.
Airlines are one type of corporate client that use the sale of carbon credits to air travellers to compensate for the greenhouse gases emitted through aircraft operations.
The Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton bought off-set credits last year to make the festival carbon neutral. The credits compensated for the air travel of musicians coming into the capital to perform.
The registering and sale of carbon credits will be a boon to taxpayers because it will help to offset the $2-million investment in a methane gas collection system installed in 2006, Wilson said.
It’s the use of the landfill gas collection system and the resulting reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that has earned the landfill a place on the environmental world stage, he said.
“It’s accomplished what we set out for it to accomplish. “For local neighbourhoods, it’s reduced odours. For the environment, it’s reduced greenhouse gases phenomenally from what we were emitting. It’s the same as taking between 13,000 and 15,000 cars off the highway every day,” Wilson said.
The decomposing garbage releases gases into the atmosphere. While methane is odourless, other trace gases aren’t and can cause an offensive smell as well as being a contributor to global warming.
Using a piping system to collect the gases and force them with a blower into a methane-burning unit, the landfill is able to flare off the gases. Heat, but not pollutants, are released back into the air.
With the methane system in place and doing its job, Wilson said he wanted to see the system – which wasn’t government financed – pay its own way.
While he’s still hoping to find a market for the potential kilowatts of energy the system produces, six years ago he pulled the landfill commission’s management team into a behind-the-scenes project to obtain carbon credit certification.
The commission’s board of directors also embraced the effort to gain certification, Wilson said.
“Here we are in little old Fredericton getting something, the first in Canada, approved on the international stage. It’s been a team effort of our whole organization to see the results of this.”
The United Nations has created a set of protocols called the clean development mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol.
It allows industrialized countries with greenhouse gas reduction commitments to invest in projects that reduce emissions. The solid waste commission is using the “Ver ” certification standard under the UN clean development mechanism protocols, which is considered one of the most comprehensive and credible carbon credit certification standards in the world, said Wilson.
“We are the first in Canada to have them approved under this international voluntary market, under the highest standard that is out there for carbon credits and we’re one of only two or three in North America to accomplish this,” Wilson said.
“It recognizes the uniqueness of this successful (methane reduction) project.”
In order to measure the true reduction in greenhouse gas levels to create verified carbon credits, the landfill commission had to invite in U.S. representatives of Det Norske Veritas, an independent foundation headquartered in Oslo, Norway, to conduct a detailed audit of its methane gas-reduction system.
“We had to demonstrate that the project was unique. We had to post a description document online for 30 days for the public to review the document and question the validity of the project,” Wilson said.
“The auditors actually came on site and audited the project. To determine the number of carbon credits that get approved, they actually factored in the additional energy it cost us to run the system and they deduct that energy … They actually looked at the net value of what we’re doing.”
BlueRegistry enables information on carbon credits and certificates to be transferred, tracked and traded on the basis of contracts.
Wilson said the landfill is in the process of negotiating agreements for the transfer and sale of carbon credits.
“We have letters of intent to sell all of our credits through to 2008. We got them approved from 2006 through to April of 2008,” Wilson said.
Future audits will allow a fresh batch of credits to be verified and marketed.
“It will be an ongoing process,” Wilson said.
Since the Fredericton Region Solid Waste Commission built its methane gas-burning system, the province has since funded Moncton, Saint John, Bathurst and Edmundston.
They have all received between $800,000 to nearly $2 million for similar systems.
Related posts:
DM
on Jun 7th, 2010
@ 6:09 am:
Bruno….: These units are sold on the voluntary market, not into a region with mandatory compliance (i.e. EU ETS). Also the money isnt going to “Canada”, it is the project developer. Basically the author is saying they are verified to the CDM standard, providing assurance for buyers that they meet that strict criteria.
The voluntary market provides an opporunity for people and businesses to show their leadership on climate issues by actually putting their money where their mouth is.