Any smart business person would have made those changes anyways. Why? Because doing them increases profits, and saves them money!

It didn’t take long for the prompter of yesterday’s blog post, “The carbon tax was really nothing more than a tax grab, designed as a phoney green initiative, and the government knew that from the start”, to pose a follow-up question to me.

The response was:

That isn’t completely true. Initial design of tax was to have monies available for companies  to access for Research and Development etc

I noted their wording of the response, which included … “isn’t completely true” … and ‘initial design of tax’. 

So how much of what I said, did this person think was true?  I’m not sure, but hey, let’s take a look at just some of the grants, given to businesses in BC, by the Pacific carbon Trust.  And remember … this is money that has in large part come from each one of us, through the carbon tax, which we pay to the government.

Encana Corporation has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 85 per cent at a drilling program in northeastern British Columbia by conserving gas during drilling and reducing flaring. The system safely and reliably recovers up to 80 percent of the natural gas produced during a typical underbalanced drilling operation. This method reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per well drilled.

IF they are now recovering 80% of what was previously lost, was it not to their benefit to do this anyway.  This recovery process provides them with more natural gas they can sell, so why was a freebie give-away from the government necessary?

Pacific Carbon Trust has invested in an Improved Forest Management project that will result in the conservation of select old growth stands on TimberWest's private land. This is the first forest project to use BC’s Forest Carbon Offset Protocol (FCOP). The project is located on a 26,000 ha of Timberwest’s old growth forest free-hold property on Vancouver Island.

Just in case you missed it in news reports sometime back, TimberWest had announced they were not going to harvest this wood, as they had determined it would be too expensive to do so.

PCT has contracted to purchase offsets generated from Randhawa Farms Ltd.’s greenhouse project. The greenhouse operator installed insulating curtains at its three greenhouse locations in Abbotsford to reduce the amount of natural gas used as a heat source. These offset activities reduce annual operating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to the natural gas baseline.

Let’s see … they add the insulating curtains, and that then reduces the amount of natural gas they had previously required.  Seems like it should have been a project they would have undertaken in the first place, to reduce their production costs.

The “Myth” of saving BC’s environment with a carbon tax

Did you know that owing a forest can make you big money with BC’s carbon tax policies??  It’s true --- it’s one of the ways that business – and even government itself – can make it look as if they are doing more for the environment than they actually are.

Those who read my blog will know that I detest the Carbon Tax as a pretend policy of environmental protection.   Rather than taking money to create efficiencies with energy usage, the government instead takes the resources of the Carbon Tax and transfers them to the Pacific Carbon Trust.  And who benefits from the largesse of the Trust --- well businesses like Encanna … and now in a Globe and Mail story from Wednesday June 8^th comes this story …

North America's largest forest carbon project launches, sells $4-million in credits
The Nature Conservancy of Canada is receiving more than $4-million in what it says is the largest forest carbon project to date in North America and the first deal of its kind in Canada.  The land conservancy organization announced in Vancouver Wednesday that it has sold carbon credits that are the equivalent of 700,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada is receiving $4 million in carbon credits (ie this is money they receive as payment from government and businesses in exchange for NOT upgrading their own plants, facilities, etc).