Isramart : Carbon fund has $120M to spend on green ideas

Isramart news:
Alberta’s rapidly-growing carbon technology fund, which banks penalties from major greenhouse gas emitters, is looking for the best ways to spend $120 million.

“We want a mix of projects which may lead to fundamental breakthroughs in green energy production, conservation and energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage,” said Eric Newell, chairman of the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation(CCEMC), an arm’s-length body established by the province.

“We are trying to be a catalyst, to get good ideas commercialized. We want to look at everything, from energy efficiency research to new ways to insulate buildings or obtain energy from garbage. There are many ways to reduce the carbon footprint,” he said.

The corporation is accepting initial expressions of interest until the end of September, after which its new board will sift out a short list of 10 to 15 projects and seek detailed information and find funding partners. Final selections will take place early in 2010.

“We are limited to$25 million over the life of each project, and we are expecting to find federal funding and corporate sponsorship,” said Newell.

“Ideally it would be the traditional one-third us, one-third federal and one-third industry.

“Of course many of the projects will be much less costly, so we may be able to do quite a few,” he said, adding “we want to take good ideas and get them commercialized, and we want to leverage our contribution.

“If others put up their money then that is a test of the quality of the project.”

The CCEMC board is composed of people from a wide range of backgrounds, from solid waste to forestry and oil to chemicals, with academics, researchers and bureaucrats, including participation of current funding groups like the Alberta Energy Research Institute and Alberta Research Council.

“CCEMC is a funding group with one board, offering strong technical and business oversight,” Newell said. “But members leave their industry hat at the door, and are not promoting certain projects but studying a wide range of projects. This is a transparent process, and that is our governance model.”

The corporation administers the technology fund established under Alberta’s climate-change initiative begun in July, 2007. Facilities which emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalents must improve their emissions intensity performance by 12 per cent. Companies then get credit for making improvements, purchase carbon offsets from others, such as farmers who practice zero tillage, or pay $15 a tonne to CCEMC.

In 2008, the fund collected $82.3 million, representing about 5.5 million tonnes of carbon, and Newell expects that size of annual cash deposit in the fund to continue.

About 90 per cent of the $82.3 million came from the energy industry, with about 50 per cent from coal-fired electricity producers like TransAlta, Capital Power and Atco and the rest from oil and gas operations and pipeline companies. The remaining 10 per cent came from industrial operations, like cement and chemical firms.

Newell hopes if the CCEMC ends up getting new technology and “real solutions” into the field, it will gain credibility with the public and earn a reputation as a good place to put carbon offsets for their own sake –rather than simply being the default location for firms which can’t make the required carbon reduction improvements are find enough carbon offsets.