Gordon Hoekstra, Vancouver Sun, Nov 30, 2011
The Southeast Kootenay school district claims it is being forced to pay more than twice the open market rate for carbon offsets, a cost that is hurting the cash-strapped district. The district, like other B.C. schools, pays $25 per tonne for carbon offsets from the Pacific Carbon Trust.
Money from the public institutions paid to the trust is used to subsidize carbon-reducing efforts by industry.
The school board has asked the province to be allowed to buy offsets on the open market, a cheaper way to reduce its greenhouse gases.
It’s one of the latest suggestions by school boards aimed at directing payments to the Pacific Carbon Trust back into schools.
B.C. schools paid about $4.5 million for carbon offsets to the trust last year.
In a letter to Education Minister George Abbott dated Monday, the Kootenay district noted that offsets trading in the European market fell to $10.28 per tonne in August.
“We are paying $80,000 friggin’ dollars to the Pacific Carbon Trust, so money from our classrooms is going into bloody boardrooms,” Southeast Kootenay school board chairman Frank Lento said Tuesday in an interview.
The education ministry deferred questions to Environment Minister Terry Lake, who said Tuesday schools will not be able to purchase offsets on the open market.
He said schools will have to continue paying the $25 fixed cost per tonne of carbon offsets to the trust.
Lake noted the Pacific Carbon Trust is the agency that allows the government to carry out its requirement that all public institutions, including hospitals and universities, are car-bon neutral.
Without the funding from schools and other institutions, the trust would not have money to buy offsets from the private sector, he said.
The trust buys carbon off-sets from industry projects – including in the forest, natural gas and cement sectors – that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Those offsets are then sold to schools and other public institutions.
The public institutions need the offsets because they cannot completely eliminate their car-bon emissions.
Municipalities are under a different regime, which allows them to buy offsets from other carbon markets.
Simon Fraser University economist Mark Jaccard said while it’s true you can buy car-bon offsets cheaper on the open market – for as little as $1 per tonne – at low cost they are essentially worthless.
The offsets will not be from projects that reduce carbon emissions, said Jaccard, pointing to an Australian scheme to create credits from culling camels.
The creation of the Pacific Carbon Trust was an attempt by the province to create quality control of carbon offsets, said Jaccard.
Concerns with the program have already been expressed by other school districts in the province.
B.C.’s environment minister has said the province is examining whether the Pacific Carbon Trust needs change, perhaps finding a way to keep public money in the public system.
One possibility is to create a separate fund that schools could apply to to reduce green-house gas emissions, said Lake.
A similar three-year, $75-million fund just ended, he said.