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Achieving Climate Neutrality by Building Local Partnerships: Local and High Quality Offset Purchasing
Presented by Amber Garrard
Green Mountain College
AASHE 2011
Summary:
Green Mountain College provides its students with opportunities to explore the meaning and significance of climate neutrality and encourages students to be engaged in the process of helping the College to reach that goal. From student activism spurring GMC to convert its heating plant to renewable fuel to creating a transportation policy for the institution, student participation has led to significant emissions reductions for the College. GMC is now climate neutral and the student voice shaped how neutrality was achieved.
This presentation is intended to outline the campus-wide participatory process undertaken by GMC to select carbon offsets. We will discuss how institutional priorities were assessed and integrated into decision-making. We will also outline the process used to select local offset projects using the ACUPCC guidelines to as a guide to choosing high quality offsets. The social and economic impacts of these choices on the local community and for Green Mountain College will be discussed. The aim of the presentation is to provide one example for small colleges looking to achieve climate neutrality, and to promote discussion of different strategies to move forward in this arena.
Setting:
Small rural school, SW Vermont. 800 students, mostly undergrad, residential. A few Masters students. Core courses include environmentalism. Students want to get actively involved in making sustainability a core value.
CAP drafted in 2009. set neutrality date of 2011
Used baseline data from 2007: 5800 metric tons of GHG.
New biomass cogen plant - data from 2010, plant not operating at optimum capacity, so inventory only dropped to 4000. Hope to see it drops more starting with 2011 numbers.
Focus on reductions first.
Now: how can we use offsets to reduce our carbon emissions?
Approach (from the ACUPCC voluntary carbon offset protocol)
• Real and tangible
• Additional
• Transparent
• Measurable
• Permanent
• Synchronous
• Verified
• Registered
• Retired
Source: Feb 2011 ACUPCC Implementer, 2008 document
Process:
Green Mountain brought three potential offset providers to campus:
• Sterling planet: large, provides offsets to well over 1000 large customers. Reasonably priced, verified, global.
• NativeEnergy: similar broker based in nearby Burlington, VT. Helps to support local businesses. Higher price, but able to identify local projects.
• CVPS CowPower: Central Vermont Public Service. Works with dairy farms in VT, collects methane in digesters that are turned into electricity. Have been buying RECs from CVPS for years, but the utility had recently developed a program to convert these into offsets. Byproduct: clean bedding product for cows, huge environmental savings. Also clean fertilizer, and a closed-loop system on the farm.
Another key player:
AGRefresh- environmental accountants who work with CVPS on Chicago Climate Exchange.
Groups came to campus and held a public forum.
Sterling Planet Proposal:
Offset: landfill gas, $5.50/MT
RECs: national wind, $1.50/MWH
NativeEnergy Proposal: more local
Offset: Landfill gas, $10
RECs: National wind: $1.45
CVPS Proposal:
Offsets: $10/MT with no RECs
Evaluation Process: open to public, campus. Students given extra credit to participate. People asked to evaluate in basis of five factors:
• Location
• Cost
• Local economic impacts
• Social impacts
• Academic value
Analysis
• Rank importance of values
• Assess provider's ability to meet priority characteristics
• Conclusion and GMC priorities: social and economic benefits, academic values
• Idenitify strengths and weaknesses
RECs vs Offsets
Renewable Energy Certificates
• proof that one MWh of elect has been produced from a renewable resource
• Premium price
• Not additional (does not ensure that electricity would not have been produced without the purchase)
Hooke water, M (2007), Trexler, M, Broekhoff, D., Kossloff, D. (2096)
Results:
Purchase of 5800 MT verified and retired offsets through CVPS Cow Power methane capture project
• Educational impact- able to visit the farms
• Regional economic benefit
• Regional social benefit
Q&A:
Process led by Sustainability Council, included four faculty members who got faculty buy-in.
Student Council promoted process to students.
A lot of the students involved were younger, required new educational effort.
Purchasing: had already been paying extra for green power from utility budget. A new administrative choice added the additional funds to buy the offsets.
The verifier, AGRefresh, certified the project just for the first year.
CVPS is looking to conglomerate their efforts on many additional local farms.
May look different moving forward.
Still an emerging market.
