COURTENAY, B.C. – The Comox Valley Regional District Board of Directors has put its support behind a new environmentally friendly project.
“As part of the CVRD’s carbon neutral commitments under the climate action charter, we purchased carbon offsets to offset corporate emissions,” said Vince Van Tongeren, the CVRD’s policy and sustainability analyst.
A carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases made to compensate for or to offset an emission made elsewhere.
“This year, those emissions were a little over 2000 tonnes. To offset those, we purchased carbon credits from the landfill gas project in the United States.”
That purchase came out to around $4500.
The remaining 2017 carbon offset funds have been listed at $43,500.
Van Tongeren said those remaining funds would be used for a solar photovoltaic (solar panels) installation at the RD’s new building project.
“The CVRD, as part of its carbon neutral commitments, what we do is we measure our energy consumption on an annual basis, and as part of that we’re able to calculate our corporate GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions,” he said.
“By offsetting those emissions, we’re doing our part to mitigate the impacts of global climate change, and by adding a solar photovoltaic installation to the regional office project, that will help reduce operating costs by reducing the amount of electricity that we will have to purchase from utilities.”
Board members Manno Theos and Larry Jangula were the only members who voted against the proposal.
