Prince George, B.C.-Residents of the Regional District of Fraser Fort George may be asked to enter into the alternate approval process. At issue is a repayable grant for $525 thousand dollars to be repaid over 5 years. The grant would be applied to it’s methane gas collection system at the Foothill land fill site to increase the collection system and improve operations.

Here’s the plan;

The Regional District is already burning off the methane gas that is being captured at the landfill, that means anywhere from 15 thousand to 20 thousand tonnes of green house gasses are no longer entering the atmosphere.    “It is the equivalent of taking 10 thousand cars off the road” says Regional District Administrator Jim Martin. 

It also means there would be significant green house gas credits that could be sold on the market to others who need them.

Enter the Green Municipal Corp. It wants to enter into a deal with the Regional District.  It would sell those credits, and the Regional District will get the financial benefit. For the first five years, the sales would be applied against the grant and an extra $100 thousand dollars to the Green Municipal Corp for doing the marketing and sales work. Once the loan is paid, those dollars would turn into revenue for the Regional District.

Who would buy the credits, does this mean credits earned here could be purchased by a polluter in China? Martin says those details have yet to be decided , “Right now British Columbia is establishing legislation ,  cap and trade legislation and they are still developing the workings of that and determining what kind of market places we may be able to work in. Federally they’ve had discussions about that cap and trade market being exclusive to Canada and there have been discussions about it being international.”

Martin says the Province will require landfills to collect and manage gas, but the Regional District is already one step ahead “We’re doing it on a voluntary basis, the Regional District made a decision in 2002 to put in a landfill gas collection system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and now we’re able to take advantage of some of those offsets.”

The Regional District also approved a Corporate Climate Action Plan, and will look at different tools to become carbon neutral by 2012. “Certainly we will be looking at different things we can do, in some cases if we are not successful in direct action, lets say driving less or turning down the heat in the buildings or insulating the buildings better, then we would be looking at purchasing offsets so we might be using our own landfill gas credits for those kinds of things.”

The Regional District needs electoral approval because the pay back period for the grant is more than five years. That process calls for 10% of the electorate signing a petition opposing the idea. The Regional District will examine further details on the idea at its meeting in November.