Forestry company TimberWest received $5.6 million from cash-strapped school districts, hospitals and municipal bodies to save old-growth timber that it didn't plan to cut in the first place, under the controversial Pacific Carbon Trust program, Business in Vancouver has learned.
The money was part of $16.3 million paid out by the Pacific Carbon Trust between April 2008 and December 17, 2011 to 11 projects in carbon credits.
BIV obtained the information through a Freedom of Information request made just over a year ago.
Here is a breakdown of all PCT credits paid out from April 2008 to December 2011:
- TimberWest, $5,609,250
- Nature Conservancy of Canada, $4,500,000
- Offsetters Clean Technology, $2,060,084
- Encana Corp., $1,617,716
- Blue Source, $605,925,
- Westcoast Energy Inc., $555,965
- International Forest Products, $372,630
- Neucel Specialty Cellulose, $342,441
- Canfor Pulp Limited Partnership, $329,910
- Kruger Products LP, $240,405
- Sempa Power Systems Ltd., $73,929.
The Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT) was created by the provincial government in 2008 as part of its climate action policies. It takes money from public bodies, such as school districts, as a penalty for not meeting government mandated carbon neutrality targets.
One of the reasons it has been so controversial is that, despite that fact it uses public money to fund private corporations, it has refused to disclose how much recipients received in public funding for carbon reduction projects, like switching to more fuel efficient boilers or preserving forests.
That information was only released after BIV successfully appealed to the Information and Privacy Commissioner.
TimberWest was the largest recipient of PCT credits. The Nature Conservancy was the second largest recipient. It received $4.5 million for a carbon sequestration for its Darkwoods forest conservation project near Nelson.
Because land conservancy groups, by their nature, preserve forests, it raises the question of how the conservation effort meets the PCT's additionality requirements.
The additionality test was designed so that PCT credits would go only to emisission reduction projects that might not have otherwise go ahead without the funding.
But there are numerous examples of projects that received PCT credits that were either already being planned, or were already being implemented, before the PCT even came into existence in 2008.
International Forest Products Ltd., for example, received $372,630 for a fuel switching project on a new sawmill that, according to publically accessible documents, was under construction in 2007 – about a year before the PCT existed.
"I would argue that every one of these entities and projects that you see public money going to was either already done, or already committed to, or business as usual," said Bob Simpson, Independent MLA for Cariboo North, who has called for an overhaul of the PCT system.
He added that pulp mill fuel-switching projects that received PCT credits – Canfor and Neucel – also received federal funding.
"They got huge amounts of money from the federal government for the projects that the Pacific Carbon Trust also gave money to," he said. "The Pacific Carbon Trust standards preclude double dipping."
Perhaps the most controversial part of the PCT is the fact that the money going to private corporations comes from public bodies, like school boards and hospitals.
As reported by BIV in "Smoke and Mirrors" (August 23, 2011), the Surrey School Board was forced to pay the PCT $500,000 in 2010 because it wasn't able to meet its carbon reduction targets – something the school board found impossible to do, due to the fact it was growing at 300 students per month and had to teach them in energy-inefficient portable buildings.
