Ensuring Smart Energy offsets are making a difference
Guest post provided by Peter Weisberg, Offset Project Analyst at The Climate Trust
The offset geeks at The Climate Trust — myself included — like to joke about the warehouses for our “inventory.” Of course, we don’t have warehouses because our “product” is intangible. We buy greenhouse gas emissions that didn’t occur because of our funding. These emission reductions are called greenhouse gas offsets.
Since offsets aren’t tangible products like light bulbs, it is critical for Smart Energy customers and other buyers to be assured that the offsets they are buying are real and accurately counted. The Climate Trust works diligently to guarantee the quality of projects that the Smart Energy program funds. One key way we do so is by ensuring that Smart Energy funds given to project developers are necessary to overcome barriers to implementation of biogas offset projects.
Take, for example, the Farm Power anaerobic digester in Mount Vernon, Washington. The Climate Trust reviewed the business plan and determined that the project was financially marginal without offset funding. In addition, the bank loan for the project was contingent on offset funding. These factors should assure Smart Energy donors that their funds are responsible for the methane reductions resulting from this project that converts cow manure into energy.
After contracting to buy offsets from projects like Farm Power, The Climate Trust monitors the projects to ensure they are producing the contracted offsets. For Smart Energy, we are using monitoring protocols such as the Climate Action Reserve, which outline procedures for accurately measuring methane emission reductions. Quality monitoring protocols are very conservative, always erring on the side of underestimating a project’s reductions. Major environmental organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Wilderness Society, Union Of Concerned Scientists and Sierra Club, issued a letter of support for the credible and transparent protocols created by the Climate Action Reserve.
Every year Farm Power and other Smart Energy projects will be monitored according to a reputable protocol. A third-party verifier (with no financial interest in the project) will review the monitoring reports annually to ensure the protocol is accurately applied. Farm Power’s original monitoring data, the verification report from the third party and other data are available online.
The Climate Trust ensures the additional and accurate measurement of offsets from Smart Energy projects to provide Smart Energy customers the confidence that their biogas offsets are helping to mitigate climate change and to preserve our environment.
For more information about these and other quality criteria, you can read the Offset Quality Initiative’s paper Ensuring Offset Quality.
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Most people who care about farm animals like to forget the fate of cows and hens that stop producing: slaughter. Is it conceivable that methane production could make cow retirement economically feasible so that we can stop rewarding these gentle critters for their milk with death?
Thank you for your interest and the opportunity to respond.
The problem on methane emissions from farms is a global issue, and one that has existed for many years. While we recognize there are strong opinions about dairy farms, Smart Energy’s focus is to take an exsisting negative (methane which is 21 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide) and turn it into something positive (a viable renewable energy source – biogas). We are encouraged as well by the exploration into biodigesters which, in the future, could digest surplus and non-utilized fruits and vegetables to become a viable energy source as well.