UBC greenhouse gas trading protocol
Creators: name: Kadijevic, Alexandre
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2012

description: Companies have already approached UBC to buy potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions from projects currently under way even though there is currently no GHG Trading Mechanism in place in Canada. This consists of an opportunity that UBC could possibly benefit from. By using standardized and internationally recognized protocols to report GHG emissions, UBC would increase the reliability of its GHG emission figures and sell GHG emissions at a reasonable price. Furthermore, by complying with a recognized protocol, UBC would be only one step from certifying its emissions ahead of the Canadian GHG Trading Scheme. Our search for recognized protocols began in Canada but with no success. Canada’s institutions, such as the Voluntary Challenge Registry and the GHG Verification Center, are still developing protocols and can only offer guidelines to report emissions. Looking abroad, the UK GHG Emissions Scheme is the only source that offers viable protocols. The UK Scheme is the first and currently the only GHG trading scheme in the world. With the assumption that Canada would replicate the UK Scheme, the scheme protocols were applied in the context of UBC. For reasons discussed in the text, the Direct Participant option was chosen as the mechanism of entry into the scheme. It requires an entity-based approach of reporting GHG emissions as opposed to project-based reporting. Technical recommendations are provided on what UBC should do in order to fully comply with UK GHG Trading Scheme Standards. This is followed by a brief introduction to the World Resource Institute, a good source of guidelines for emissions not covered by the UK Scheme. Within a few weeks of completing this project, the Canadian Government published a discussion paper outlining how the Canadian Trading Scheme would operate. As a result of what is proposed, UBC would not be able to participate using UK’s Direct Participant entity-based reporting approach. It will only be able to obtain credits from project-based emission reductions. UBC is currently undergoing energy retrofit projects in collaboration with MCW. The International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) will be used to measure energy efficiency performance for each project and insure compliance with targets. MCW is in fact offering performance guarantees. Further investigation of the 2001 protocol document indicates that its standards are likely to become the international greenhouse gas trading standard for monitoring and verification of greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, the IPMVP is the appropriate protocol for UBC to use for eventual certification of GHG emissions. Once UBC produces verifiable emission reductions, it will be able to register them at the Registered Emissions Reduction program offered by the VCR and wait until the Canadian GHG Offset System is in place. Alternatively, it could also trade these emissions immediately at a favorable price due to the increasing reliability of the underlying data. Another possibility if for UBC to keep its records of projects that reduced emissions and wait until the Canadian GHG trading system is in place. ”Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”