County lands targeted for carbon credits
Brokers see opportunity to trade, official says
By GREG MARTIN, Sun Newspaper, Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Should the lands that Florida and Charlotte County have purchased in recent years to conserve the environment be used to justify allowing industries to spew more pollution someplace else?
That question lies at the heart of the carbon cap-and-trade strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- and it may be coming before both state legislators and local commissioners in the near future.
The Charlotte County Environmentally Sensitive Lands Advisory Committee already received a briefing on the concept during its meeting Wednesday. Members were told that brokers of carbon credits have contacted county staffers and are interested in making a presentation to the committee in the near future, said Jim Thomson, county director of environmental services.
"We just wanted to give the committee a heads up that there are people out there, brokers," he said. "They're looking to use the forests and trees as a carbon bank.
"We wanted (the members) to be cautious," Thomson added. "'They're selling something. Make sure you don't jump and bite.'"
Carbon brokers have also approached state officials about purchasing credits on such tracts as the state-owned Babcock Ranch, Thomson said.
The Legislature in 2008 directed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to conduct an inventory of the carbon-credit potential on all the lands purchased under the Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever Programs, said Marianne Gengenbach, environmental affairs administrator for the DEP's division of state lands.
The DEP hired a consultant to conduct the study, which is about half completed, she said.
The concept calls for industries seeking federal permits for such facilities as smokestacks to offset increases in pollution by purchasing carbon credits from forested areas.
Trees capture carbon from the air while growing but release it after they die and decompose. So, to sequester carbon may require the harvest of the trees to manufacture products, Gengenback said.
That may conflict with the goal of the state's conservation program, she said.
"For us to move forward into a situation where we would be involved in the carbon market, there'd have to be a whole lot more information," Gengenbach said. "Right now, we don't even know what the carbon sequestration potential is."
Currently, there is no federal program establishing a system for trading carbon credits. However, there are pollution standards, including those set under the Kyoto protocols, and government agencies have begun accepting carbon credits as part of mitigation in the federal permitting process, Thomson said.
The Charlotte County landfill will soon begin selling carbon credits for capturing methane from its decomposing garbage, Thomson said.
The county expects to have a contractor install the methane collection system within the next eight months, he said. The gas will be burned to generate electricity.
Combined, the credits and the energy will generate about $800,000 per year, he said.
But selling credits on the county's conservation lands raises questions, he said.
"To make this work, you'd have to manage these sites to be carbon sinks," Thomson said. "We're there to keep the natural environment, the plants and animals."
John Phillips, ESLAC member, also sees an ethical dilemma.
"Selling credits -- that isn't really helping anything, because what we have is the status quo," he said. "I think most of us on that committee are leery of this."
"Its free money to the county, but in the big picture everybody takes a walk on pollution," added ESLAC member Clarke Keller.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment