Quality Offsets Guaranteed

NW Natural works with several partners to guarantee that the offsets provided to Smart Energy customers are of the highest quality.

To implement the Smart Energy program, NW Natural is working together with The Climate Trust, a Portland-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote climate change solutions by developing high-quality greenhouse gas projects and advancing sound climate policy.

In 1997, Oregon became the first state in the nation to create a carbon emission standard. The Climate Trust was established as the only nonprofit qualified to identify, evaluate, and contract for offsets on behalf of energy facilities that are required to meet the standard. As the first and largest institutional buyer of carbon offsets in the early days of the U.S. carbon market, The Climate Trust’s pioneering work has been critical to the development of industry standards in the United States.

Since its founding, The Climate Trust has invested $8.7 million in projects that are expected to offset 2.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and has been recognized as one of the leading providers of high quality offsets in the United States. More information about The Climate Trust can be found at www.climatetrust.org.

Carbon offset programs that work

The Climate Trust funds innovative projects that showcase different strategies to reduce, remove, or avoid emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. The Climate Trust’s project portfolio includes the following innovative types of projects: biodigesters, cogeneration, building efficiency, fuel switching, industrial efficiency, material substitution, renewable energy, forest sequestration, and transportation efficiency.

All of The Climate Trust’s offset projects meet rigorous quality standards to ensure environmental integrity. These standards have been designed to ensure projects are additional to business-as-usual activities, apply quantification protocols that generate a conservative volume of emission reductions, are rigorously monitored and subject to third-party verification, and have other positive environmental and economic benefits such as protecting water quality and creating jobs.

Such high quality standards have led both Clean Air Cool Planet and Carbon Concierge to recognize The Climate Trust as a leading national offset provider. In addition, the Voluntary Carbon Standard adopted The Climate Trust’s tests for additionality, the most important criterion for offsets. The Climate Trust’s projects have demonstrated that it is possible to acquire high quality offsets at a competitive price using recognized standards.

The NW Natural partnership

Through the Smart Energy program, NW Natural and The Climate Trust will invest in carbon offset projects that are most compatible with NW Natural’s business – natural gas distribution. The major focus will be investments in biogas development.

Smart Energy investments

Nearly 70 percent of all Smart Energy contributions will be used by The Climate Trust to fund offset projects including project identification, development, monitoring, and operational support. The remaining 30 percent will be used for overall program administration and to educate Oregonians about Smart Energy and climate change issues.

Required criteria for Smart Energy offsets

The Climate Trust employs the following criteria to ensure that Smart Energy dollars are going to credible projects that have a positive impact on the climate. Smart Energy offset projects must:

• Meet a credible additionality standard (i.e., The Climate Trust or Climate Action Reserve) that clearly demonstrates how carbon finance helps the project overcome financial, technological, or institutional barriers or how it is not common practice.
• Have a credible monitoring plan in place that quantifies emissions reduction performance and subject it to third-party verification.
• Permanently reduce or avoid emissions.
• Demonstrate clear title to the emission reductions to guarantee that offsets have clear and defensible ownership rights and are not subject to double counting.

Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF)

The Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) is an entrepreneurial nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon that works to create new sources of renewable energy. NW Natural is investing alongside BEF’s wholly owned subsidiary, BEF Renewable Inc., in a first-of-its-kind biodigester project at Threemile Canyon Farms near Boardman, Oregon.

The biodigester project utilizes an innovative “fixed film” design: about 30,000 discarded auto tires are installed inside the digester to promote efficient processing. BEF and NW Natural are hopeful this design will offer a low cost and workable solution for dairy operations of all sizes to produce energy on site.

BEF has been developing projects in the renewable energy field for nearly a decade. In 2000, BEF’s first solar project was installed in partnership with the City of Ashland, Oregon; at the time, the 30 kW system was the largest grid-connected installation in the Northwest. In 2001, BEF joined the Last Mile Electric Cooperative (small publicly-owned utilities united to develop utility-scale wind) to develop the White Creek Wind Farm (205 megawatts) in the Columbia Gorge. White Creek is the largest wind farm in the nation controlled by publicly owned power providers. In 2003, BEF began many years of support of a dairy manure-to-energy biomass project in Tillamook, Oregon. In 2008, BEF helped create a unique renewable energy project at the Big Sky Dairy near Gooding, Idaho. The Big Sky digester, which went on-line in January 2009, was the first renewable energy development in the United States to be listed on the Gold Standard Registry, an internationally recognized standard for high quality carbon offsets.

About BEF

Founded in 1998, the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) is an entrepreneurial nonprofit that engages market forces and ingenuity to help people address our most pressing energy and water issues. Through sales of carbon offsets, BEF supports renewable energy development and education and long-term watershed restoration. Learn more at b-e-f.org.