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Educators with tight budgets wonder why money they must pay won't go to greening school facilities.
Leaky logic? Cash contributed by schools doesn't necessarily come back to help them reduce emissions. Image by Quinn Kelly.
The resort town aims to be carbon neutral, but does that mean paying too much for 'hot air'?
Educators have been bemused by the new carbon-offset requirement that the provincial government has imposed on them. The basic idea is fine with them: paying for the schools' carbon footprint makes sense unless you're in total denial about global warming.
But the process seems to baffle almost everyone. First, school districts had to purchase a particular software item called SMARTTool that would enable them to calculate their carbon emissions. That will cost Vancouver alone some $45,000.
Boards are reimbursed yearly for what they spend on the provincial carbon tax. But they have to pay the Pacific Carbon Trust $25 per tonne of carbon emissions. Vancouver has budgeted $290,000. Coquitlam expects to pay about $300,000. A spokesperson for Surrey schools told The Tyee the district will pay about $500,000.
Small northern districts aren't paying that much, but heating and fuel expenses are hard to reduce. And the offset system isn't clear to them. One interior teachers' association recently proposed a resolution to the BCTF, asking it to denounce the "$11 per student" offset -- but the teachers didn't realize that the $11 was not province-wide, but simply how the offset cost worked out in that particular district.
The same applies to post-secondary (Capilano University, for example, expects to pay about $62,500 in offsets), but let's focus on the K-12 system.
Follow the money
The money contributed by the schools doesn't necessarily come back to help them reduce emissions. The Pacific Carbon Trust, in association with BC Hydro etc. will fund all kinds of carbon-reduction efforts, including those proposed by private corporations. The Ministry of Environment, however, insists that "Carbon neutrality is not about taking from school budgets to benefit private companies."
The Trust invests its revenues into "a host of projects that produce clean, low-carbon energy; that conserve energy or increase energy efficiency; and that capture or store carbon from the atmosphere."
This all happens under the Public Sector Energy Conservation Agreement fund, which assesses proposals from school boards, universities and colleges, Crown corporations, and health authorities. Established in 2007 with $75 million over three years, PSECA then disburses funds for projects like solar thermal projects and retrofitting old buildings' heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC).
The Ministry of Environment says that in the first two years of this program, "We have invested $50 million in public sector energy conservation projects. This has resulted in $7.4 million in energy cost savings annually, 18,700 tonnes of reduced greenhouse gas emissions annually, and 38.6 GWh of reduced electricity use annually."
Pitching PSECA
School boards could apply until August for the third round of PSECA funding for solar projects, HVAC retrofits, or other "open call" projects that "demonstrate a GHG [greenhouse gas] reduction, have a net energy savings, and a Net Present Value per tonne of GHGs of $10 or more." They could also apply for "District Energy System" projects that would reduce GHGs and energy costs.
Most boards that applied have now been told whether their proposals succeeded or not; as PSECA said about open-call proposals, "As anticipated, applications exceeded the available funding by a considerable margin."
On balance, carbon offsets are a good idea but the method has been underfunded, say school system sources. PSECA grants dry up at the end of the 2010-11 school year. Unless the program is re-funded, boards will have to cut their emissions by spending more from their regular budgets. That will mean cutting something else.
Even assuming that the post-Campbell Liberal government puts new money into PSECA, not all schools districts will see their proposals approved. For them, the only alternative will be to reduce their carbon footprint by cutting down energy expenses -- perhaps by turning down thermostats in classrooms and running fewer school buses. Or closing still more schools. Otherwise, SMARTTool will oblige them to pay $25 per tonne, indefinitely. In other words, the beatings will continue until morale improves.
In addition, carbon offsets have not even been explained, let alone marketed, to stressed school boards and teachers. Offsets are not a major component of school budgets, but to school administrators trying to manage tight budgets, they seem like just another slice in the death of a thousand cuts.
Revisit offsets?
Should the next Liberal premier revisit the carbon offsets issue, some educators hope that Victoria will at least subsidize the offset-estimate process, and then put more money into PSECA. They say that would give boards more incentive to find new ways to reduce their carbon emissions.
And while helping to reduce emissions in the private sector will also benefit teachers and students, it's equally true that green schools and universities benefit the private sector. Pumping schools' offset payments back into the schools would make carbon neutrality easier to market (and explain) to educators. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Urbanismo
2 years ago
AGW . . . when will the canard ware out?
" . . . unless you're in total denial about global warming."
No one is in denial about global warming Crawford but it would be great if you would get a handle on it.
The earth warms, the earth cools: has done for millennia even before the arrogant humanoid louts came along with the notion they can control the Sun.
Governments can stick us for all the taxes their pathological little minds can dream up. All they want is more and more of our money.
And when they have got all our money the earth will still warm or cool depending on the whim of the Sun.
And in the meantime we'll be pissed off 'cos the Hybrid can't accommodate all the kids!
In the meantime there are big problems of which government seems incapable of addressing: war, fractional reserve banking, debt, foul air, foul water, ugly cities . . . ugly peoole . . . shall I go on?
Jeezless man get real . . .
mopled
2 years ago
Trading your life's breath
One has to wonder at the ability of otherwise rational people to swallow the climate nonsense in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
The scandalous Chicago Climate Exchange
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/553236/201011091851/The-Crash-Of-The-Climate-Exchange.aspx
shut down when CO2 fell to less than 10 cents a ton, yet BC schools, hospitals and government offices are forced to submit to this robbery by paying $25 a ton.
In the meantime, "the tide seems to be turning. The Climate Conference fiasco in Copenhagen, Climategate scandal and stabilization of worldwide temperatures since 1995 have given rise to growing doubts about the putative threat of “dangerous global warming” or “global climate disruption.” Indeed, even Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and one of the main players in Climategate, now acknowledges that there has been no measurable warming since 1995, despite steadily rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.
People are paying attention, and opinion polls in many countries show a dramatic fall in the ranking of climate change among people’s major concerns. They are also beginning to understand that major rain and snow storms, hurricanes and other weather extremes are caused by solar-driven changes in global jet streams and warm-cold fronts, not by CO2, and that claims about recent years being the “warmest ever” are based on false or falsified temperature data."
http://www.cfact.org/a/1843/Climate-change-no-longer-scary-in-Europe
Now if Crawford could only get his head out of the sweat-box maintained by money from sinister foundations and parasitic NGOs, he might notice that it's colder and will probably stay that way for the next 20-40 years.
http://www.twawki.com/?p=9623&upm_export=pdf
mopled
2 years ago
Incredible 'Real' Reason for Carbon Trading?
"Critics who think that the U.S. dollar will be replaced by some new global currency are perhaps thinking too small. On the world horizon looms a new global currency that could replace all paper currencies and the economic system upon which they are based. The new currency, simply called Carbon Currency, is designed to support a revolutionary new economic system based on energy (production, and consumption), instead of price. Our current price-based economic system and its related currencies that have supported capitalism, socialism, fascism and communism, is being herded to the slaughterhouse in order to make way for a new carbon-based world. It is plainly evident that the world is laboring under a dying system of price-based economics as evidenced by the rapid decline of paper currencies. The era of fiat (irredeemable paper currency) was introduced in 1971 when President Richard Nixon decoupled the U.S. dollar from gold. Because the dollar-turned-fiat was the world's primary reserve asset, all other currencies eventually followed suit, leaving us today with a global sea of paper that is increasingly undesired, unstable, unusable. The deathly economic state of today's world is a direct reflection of the sum of its sick and dying currencies, but this could soon change." – The August Review (Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy?)
http://www.augustreview.com/issues/technocracy/carbon_currency:_a_new_beginning_for_technocracy?_20100125155/#
Gordo is certainly a Globalist, but what about the rest of the Green Movement?
"The best way to win an argument is to control both sides of it."
Who said that?
frank2
2 years ago
How can a government
How can a government ostensibly concerned with reducing regulations both establish an off-set program (with all its extra costs of administration and uncertain use of funds) AND reimburse school boards for carbon tax? Surely it would be simpler and more effective to raise the carbon tax AND apply it to everyone generating GHG? Of course. BUT that would mean the private sector (including the exempt oil and gas producers) would have to pull their weight -- as well as public institutions such as schools and municipalities.
Umslopogaas
2 years ago
Silly question perhaps...
Do private schools have to pay carbon offsets?
RickW
2 years ago
mopled
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201011241829dowjonesdjonline000556&title=earths-large-lakes-are-warming-from-climate-change-study
I haven't noticed it getting colder. Perhaps it's a phenomena that follows you around, not unlike Joe Btfsplk out of L'il Abner, who always travels with a dark cloud over his head.....
mopled
2 years ago
RickW says with a straight face
"I haven't noticed it getting colder"
I guess you also didn't notice that there has been no warming since 1998 either. As to the lakes...yes, they warmed over the last 25 years...when it was warm! Water takes longer than earth both to warm and to cool.
Warm or cold, we humans still didn't do it by our breathing or our driving, or by making synthetic crude, Dude.
mopled
2 years ago
New peer reviewed study: global warming lowers death rates
"…they found there were only 0.7 death per million people per year due to warming in the hottest part of the year, but a decrease of fully 85 deaths per million people per year due to warming in the coldest part of the year, for a phenomenal lives-saved to life-lost ratio of 121.4."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/23/new-peer-reviewed-study-global-warming-lowers-death-rates/
RickW
2 years ago
mopled - look up the meaning of "augmentation"
Where I live, dude, it used to snow and now it rains (for the most part) - since 1998.
mopled
2 years ago
So?
Climate changes, we all agree on that. It is only the cause which was in dispute and now that CO2 has been eliminated as the prime cause to all but the terminally deluded or the heavily conflicted, we can continue to evaluate the real climate change drivers.
Paper: Compelling Evidence of Cosmic Ray-Climate Relationship
A paper published today in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics finds "perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far of a GCR [Galactic Cosmic Ray]-climate relationship." The galactic cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al explains how small changes in the solar magnetic field during solar cycles can be amplified via effects on galactic cosmic rays, which in turn seed cloud formation to affect global climate.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/11/paper-compelling-evidence-of-cosmic-ray.html
Please note the graph at the top of the page. Notice how CO2 has continued to rise while both the temperature and the PDO trends continue to go down.....or are you saying "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes"?
Urbanismo
2 years ago
A bizarre footnote to the history of science . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YcGlHxhckw&feature=player_embedded#!
Piker
2 years ago
The real issue is not gloabl warming
Finally, someone identifies the real reason for the Pacific Carbon Trust: it is nothing more than an infrastructure slush fund, funded by public sector organizations, to benefit large scale BC Liberal donors.
Take a look at the recipients of the funding and cross list them to the Elections BC database (you know, EBC still does some good work for all you haters):
Pan Pacific Hotels
Lafarge Cement
Coast Hotels
Various greenhouses in the Fraser Valley
This thing is still in its infancy: just wait until Teck, the new Car Dealers and Independent contractors association figures out a way to get their mitts on the free money.
morechatter
2 years ago
Carbon Tax dosen't include the environment!
The carbon tax is just that money for serious carbon polluters, its the payoff industry gets for being a serious participator in environmental destruction. British Colombian handsomely reward destroyers of the planet with a carbon tax break that industry takes laughing all the way to the bank.
Who does the province have making sure carbon emissions are lowered but the homeless who don't have a light to turn on in the first place and taking the bus not likely as walking is more the way around.
mopled
2 years ago
What the Banksters want out of Cancun
"a statement issued by 259 investment organisations, controlling "collective assets totalling over $15 trillion" – including major banks, insurance companies and pension funds. These are the bodies calling most stridently for "government action on climate change", because they are the ones who hope to make vast sums of money out of it. They are desperate for a treaty of the type they failed to get at Copenhagen – even more so since the collapse of the US cap and trade bill – because they see their chance of turning global warming into the most lucrative fruit machine in history dwindling by the month."
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/climate-reports/8184-there-are-black-days-ahead-for-the-carbon-industry-
and the amazing statement by an IPCC Official: “Climate Policy Is Redistributing The World's Wealth”
Thursday, 18 November 2010 13:16 Neue Zürcher Zeitung
"Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated."
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html
Doesn't that make you feel all altruistic and mushy? The Liberals carbon charade is right in line with the Globalist Agenda and the NDP supports it all the way, so does all the local media.