Carbon Offsets in Ontario

There is an interesting note in the Law Times about a new carbon offset program in Ontario. This program was announced in September, during the election campaign, and was ignored by the media. I'm with Howard Hampton on this one, the media really ignored a lot of important issues during the campaign. It had nothing to do with ignoring his party, all parties were ignored when they spoke about the environment.

The government announcement and the subsequent article in the Law Times are puzzling by the parts that they leave out. Offsets as a mechanism are part and parcel of a cap-and-trade system, except for those that are for entertainment purposes only. You buy a credit to offset the amount by which you exceed the cap that has been imposed on you. You sell an offset or credit when you are well below your cap.

So starting with agriculture and forestry implies that Ontario is imposing GHG gas emissions caps on the agricultural and forestry industries. That could be good. Where are those caps? Are they actual caps or are they just intensity-based? Why are the farmers not out there debating this? This could be a good way for the hard-pressed beef cattle industry to ease out of that production which emits so much GHG.

It could be a way to promote low-till and no-till agriculture, to improve manure management, and to reduce the amount of fertilizer used. Calculated correctly, it will kill off the silly 5% biofuel target unless the farming and transformation is done in a way that at least breaks even in terms of GHG emission.

With cap-and trade, farmers could keep on using old high-till and manure handling methods, or stay in the beef business, but then have to buy offsets from the manufacturing sector or from Ontario Power Generation, who have so far led the way to GHG reduction. Or you could reward those farmers who can prove their entire supply chain is 100% Syncrude-free.

All right, I admit I don't really believe it. The program sounds voluntary. A farmer does something good and gets a credit while his neighbour steps in to adopt the bad practice to fill the void and gets no disincentive. To me, starting with farming and land use is a sure sign that the credits are for show only. Canada has tried for a long time to fool itself into thinking that replanting a forest reduces GHG. Most forests are really relatively carbon neutral. Environment Canada tried that and found out that land use, despite all the work of Mother Nature, doesn't lower our emissions on paper it increases them. Not counting them Canada has the seventh worst record on emission levels, but counting the forests it's the third worst. The only country with cooperative trees is Latvia, whose emissions are negative. Bad luck, reducing our GHGs is not in Mother Nature's mission statement, nature is designed to keep them about constant. For every tree you plant you get a million bugs eager to release whatever carbon the tree fixes.

But planting a tree is such a lovely symbolic gesture, surely that is worth money. And composting is so righteous! Sorry, nature has been capturing and releasing carbon for many millenia without a significant effect on GHG levels. You actually have to extract and burn less fossil fuels and limestone in total, or stop generating so much methane and NOx. This seems like just a feel-good PR program. Please prove me wrong.

Tags: Greenhouse Gas Energy Carbon Offset Environment Ontario

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