Presentation to the CRD's Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee by Stuart Hertzog March 10, 2010 on Green House Gas emissions.
(Note: At the meeting the committee asked staff to report back on a review of the calculations and claims made by Mr Hertzog).
The greenhouse gas analysis in the draft Business Plan claims that by creating and burning biogas and biosolids, this project can become carbon-negative.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Minister of Environment has ordered you to stop sending untreated sewage into the ocean, ostensibly to protect the marine environment. But instead of dumping sewage into the sea, this sewage plan proposes to use the atmosphere as the dumping ground.
Discharging untreated sewage into the ocean has drawbacks, but it does not create greenhouse gases. The CRD's ocean-based sewage system has a minute carbon footprint. Marine scientists believe that the ocean disposal is environmentally acceptable.
This would change dramatically if you proceed with this plan.
The reports before you suggest that the greenhouse gas emissions from burning biogas and biosolids for energy count as carbon credits, making the overall project "net carbon negative".
This is a complete deception. This extremely expensive, greenhouse-gas-producing proposal if proceeded with in its present form, would accelerate global warming, not reduce it.
Using your consultant's own numbers, I have calculated that processing CRD liquid wastes into methane and biosolids and using them to generate energy, will add at least 1.6 Megatonnes -- 1.6 million tonnes -- of CO2e to the global atmosphere over the 40-year life of the project.
It will not 'save' 17,000 to 18,000 tonnes CO2e a year as the reports before you claim. How can carbon credits be claimed for dramatically increasing the CRD's carbon footprint?
This project has the potential to prevent the BC government from attaining its own legislated goal of reducing BC carbon emissions by 33% below 2007 levels by 2020, and by 80% below 2007 levels by 2050.
There is an urgent need to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions at this time -- not increase them as this project would do. Climate change will not be averted by deceptive accounting.
Your consultants base their claims on the questionable argument that biogas and biosolids are not anthropogenic (human-created) fuels, but biogenic (created by natural processes) and do not increase the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere.
The draft Business Plan claims that "Biogenic carbon sources can be considered an offset when utilized in place of an anthropogenic source (for example, when using as a fuel source in place of natural gas)." -- (Biosolids Management Plan, November 4, 2009 p. 8.3)
We humans are indeed animals, but to define biogas and biosolids as 'biogenic' is intellectually dishonest. Anthropogenic sewage treatment produces anthropogenic biogas and biosolids, and the greenhouse gases and other emissions created by burning them also are anthropogenic.
The only thing sustainable about the human food/sewage cycle is that the human population will continue to grow, and continue to poop, especially in the CRD. The volume of greenhouse gases we humans can generate from municipal sewage has no limit -- but our atmosphere does.
The carbon credits claimed in these reports are bogus. They do not exist. They are emissions and should be counted as such. This proposed plan has a 1.6 Megatonne CO2e forty-year footprint.
There is no evidence that biogas or bioenergy will reduce fossil fuel consumption. Rather than displacing fossil fuels, biogas and biosolids only add to the fuel supply. There is no nexus between gas or electricity entering a distribution system and its final use, so your consultants cannot claim that the gas generated in Victoria will be used to 'displace' any gas burned here.
Consumption depends on many market factors, and in normal trading, Terasen and BC Hydro will simply add these biofuels to their energy portfolio and sell them on to their customers. This proposal will not reduce natural gas or energy consumption. It will simply enable them to rise.
There are also major discrepancies between the carbon offset claims made in recent reports. Both the September and December 2009 Options Assessments claim a carbon credit of 1,742 tonnes CO2e/year from the biosolids burned in cement kilns, while the November 2009 Biosolids Management Plan claims carbon credits of 9,324 CO2e/year for the same item. The carbon footprints given for the soil amendment products also differ in the Management Plan.
Clearly, there is some serious fudging of the numbers going on.
Members of the committee, I strongly suggest that the carbon credits claimed in these reports are in reality fictitious, and I urge you to throughly re-examine the information offered to you.
There is no need for the CRD to rush into this project at this time. Instead of this expensive, end-of-pipe, environmentally-destructive solution, you must consider the real carbon footprint implications of this project. What has been represented to you so far, is total bull... solids.
Thank you.
Stuart Hertzog