The idea is to ultimately reduce Squamish’s carbon footprint.
Working with Cowichan Energy Alternatives, the District of Squamish is setting up a carbon marketplace, which works like a small local stock exchange for carbon credits.
“Let’s say I am flying to Victoria and I want to offset my carbon footprint of that flight, then I can go into the local carbon marketplace and offset there,” explained Mayor Patricia Heintzman.
“So my money… will go into this marketplace whereby it will fund businesses within the community that are helping to reduce our carbon footprint – so we are keeping that money local.”
The provincial government has mandated that all municipalities become carbon neutral, Heintzman noted, and even though the district is actively working to reduce its footprint, the only way to get to carbon neutral at this point is to buy offsets.
Last week, council approved the early release of $23,514 from the 2017 budget, currently in draft form, out of the $40,000 earmarked in the coming year’s budget to get a carbon marketplace going in Squamish.
The released funds are for the first phase of the work with Duncan-based Cowichan Energy Alternatives, a not-for-profit organization that began in 2008.
“The funding will go towards setting it up and getting it going,” said Heintzman, adding an online portal will be created.
The district’s Carbon Neutral Reserve Fund, established in 2008, had about $167,000 as of Jan. 3, according to a staff report to council.
The carbon marketplace project is in line with the 2016 strategic plan to “develop a policy that moves the District of Squamish towards carbon neutrality by 2018.”
Matt Blackman, of the Squamish’s Alternative Energy Group, told The Squamish Chief he would rather have seen the money and energy for this project go toward forwarding electric car ridership in the district.
“My concern is… is there any money in the budget for doing charging stations for electric vehicles? Because that is something definite we can do. It is inexpensive, relatively speaking,” Blackman said. “Electric vehicles are coming… And there has been a huge hoopla about the shortfall of our local transit system and we worked to get a low speed electric bylaw passed so that we could bring these things in and allow people to make local trips to take pressure off the transit system and make it very inexpensive for people, and there has been no follow-up at all.”
Heintzman said that the marketplace project is separate from anything to do with electric vehicles.
In terms of an electric vehicle charging station, she said the district and council would want to see organizations or businesses come forward with partnerships to get more of them installed in the community.
