Heres a little article from "Carbon Offsets Daily".
Carbon trading market pays off for Alberta farmers
| Sourced From Calgaryherald.com |
It’s 8:30 a. m. and farmer Greg Appleyard is busy working the phones and shaking hands at his massive agricultural enterprise just north of Strathmore.
From an office in the bungalow-sized headquarters, he oversees a mind-boggling 8,100 hectares of farmland and a 25,000-head feedlot, one of the largest in Alberta. Cattle pens stretch as far as the eye can see; the stench of manure fills the air.
Appleyard steals a few minutes out of a whirlwind day to receive a special delivery with a much sweeter smell– a cheque for about $100,000.
He earned the money in a government-approved system simply for farming the same way he has for years: tilling his wheat, barley and canola crops fewer times over the course of the growing season.
“This is the future,” says the smiling 34-year-old Albertan, glancing at the cheque on his desk. “We were lucky we were already trying it.”
For a growing number of Alberta farmers, less carbon is quickly becoming more money in the province’s fledgling carbon trading market.
It’s the only one of its kind in North America and a program about to be duplicated on the federal scene by the Harper government in a so-called cap-and-trade system –allowing greenhouse gas emitters to buy and trade carbon credits.
Suddenly, hot air is worth cold cash.
But questions are mounting –including from Alberta’s auditor general–about the legitimacy of the credits, whether this market will help combat climate change, and how it will affect consumers.
Agricultural producers like Appleyard are reducing their carbon footprint and capturing hot air in their soils, and then selling the provincially approved credits derived from the environmental gains.
On his farm, the soil acts as an emissions “sink” that absorbs greenhouse gases, while changes to farming practices have helped Appleyard reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released from his lands or generated from his cattle’s manure.
“It’s motivating to try to stay ahead (of the pack),” he says after receiving the cheque.
Handing over the windfall is Leann Kruger, who’s making a quick pit stop as she criss-crosses the province in a green Honda Ridgeline truck doling out dollars.
Kruger’s employer, Parkland Agri Services, is part of a larger group of companies known as CROP– Carbon Reduction Offset Projects –that are rounding round-like up farmers like Appleyard across Alberta and helping them generate cash in a way never imagined only a few years ago.
“How easy is it to give out money?” Kruger says. “It’s rewarding seeing how this thing is evolving.”
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Fact
-It takes two to four hectares of low-tilled land to generate one carbon credit.
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FACTS
-Alberta’s carbon trading market first launched in the
summer of 2007. Credits initially traded for around $6 to $8 per tonne; now they’re around $9 to $13. One credit = one tonne of emissions reductions.
-An average vehicle emits five tonnes of emissions per year.
About 100 kilometres to the northwest, at the CROP offices in Didsbury, general manager Lynn Kennett is hard at work securing contracts with farmers like Appleyard to provide thousands of carbon credits for power company Epcor and its subsidiary, Capital Power.
The electricity giant, whose coal-fired plants spew vast amounts of carbon car-dioxide into the atmosphere, needs offsets from farmers to help meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets mandated by the Alberta government.
Alberta’s carbon market is an emerging industry worth tens of millions of dollars, and one set to multiply in size as governments around the globe adopt new regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for contributing to global warming.
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