By Sarah Sutton
Alberta Farmer Express staff

Wikipedia defines carbon offsetting as the act of mitigating (“offsetting”) greenhouse gas emissions. Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2006 was “carbon neutral,” and a Google search on those words reveals more than a million hits.

“It’s out there and it’s being seen as a material asset to be managed and accounted for,” says Alberta carbon offset expert Karen Haugen-Kozyra. She was at FarmTech 2008 in Edmonton on Jan. 31 to outline how Alberta’s carbon offset system works and how producers might take advantage of it.

Haugen-Kozyra is currently seconded to Climate Change Central to help build infrastructure and tools for Alberta’s carbon offset market. Otherwise, she is the environmental and land use policy member with Alberta Agriculture and Food’s Policy Secretariat.

Starting July 1, 2007, Alberta became the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce targets for reducing greenhouse gases from more than 101 facilities operating in the province. Another system, the Chicago Climate Exchange, exists but it is a voluntary market.

The Alberta regulatory framework includes a credit system which gives Albertans the opportunity to develop carbon-reducing projects that can be sold as offsets.

“As this thing takes off, so does the criticism,” says Haugen-Koyzra. Many people out there are trying to sell offsets, she says, but there is a lack of traceability as some buyers are “getting burned” when they discover the trees aren’t there.

Alberta’s compliance-based market, in its infancy, is supported by an act and regulations, which require all facilities emitting over 100,000 tonnes of carbon to reduce their emissions by 12 per cent by March 31. Recent estimates show that Alberta produces about 400 million tonnes of carbon each year, which is equivalent to the output of some small countries.

There are three ways emitters can offset their emissions. They can trade credits between regulated entities (that is, between themselves), pay $15 per tonne to the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund, or purchase carbon offsets from sellers.

It’s not likely that buyers will purchase offsets from individual agricultural producers, says Haugen-Kozyra. Instead, aggregators will act as a go-between for groups of farmers with offsets to sell and the buyers.

The government has capped carbon prices at $15 per tonne, but current prices are less than $2. Still, some sellers have been offered prices as high as $12 and as low as $5.

Look for more on Alberta’s carbon offset market in coming issues of Alberta Farmer Express.