Hospitals, colleges and universities could soon be forced into a pollution grant program that critics say is already failing to deliver promised savings at many school districts.
Environment Minister Mary Polak has said she is considering expanding a carbon-neutral grant program — already in place for school districts — to health authorities and post-secondary institutions.
The program is supposed to help cash-strapped school districts by returning some of the money they are forced to pay the Pacific Carbon Trust to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. The province announced last week it will collapse the carbon trust and fold its functions into the Environment Ministry.
The government argues the grant program will, over the long-run, return all of the money paid by school districts back in the form of grants for local projects that conserve energy and decrease emissions.
Critics, including several school districts, say the grant program isn’t coming close to covering the money spent, and is wasting tax dollars that could be used for teachers, classroom learning and school upgrades.
The Greater Victoria School District has had to pay the Pacific Carbon Trust about $188,000 annually for three years to cover the amount of greenhouse gases produced.
It has received one grant in return: $170,000 to replace a boiler at a school, said Seamus Howley, facilities director.
“We’d be happy to keep that money and reinvest in facility projects ourselves,” Howley said.
The Vancouver School District paid $500,000 in carbon offsets last year and received a $100,000 grant to buy three electric vehicles. Board chairwoman Patti Bacchus has publicly described it as a “lousy deal.”
Overall, B.C. school districts spent $4.5 million on carbon offsets in 2012.
The Pacific Carbon Trust is supposed to pool that money with payments by other government agencies and use it to invest in environmentally friendly programs that help offset the pollution.
But B.C.’s auditor general has slammed the trust for investing in questionable private projects, such as a forest in southeastern B.C. that was already going to be protected and an oil company drilling upgrade that mainly benefited the private company.
The school carbon-neutral grant program is worth $5 million a year, but because projects are picked on merit not every district gets grants every year, the Environment Ministry.
“The intent over the years is that all districts receive the same amount of funding for ‘green’ capital projects as they were required to spend on carbon offsets,” its statement said.
The Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District pays $118,000 a year in carbon offsets. It received a $25,000 grant for an electric vehicle last year, and $218,000 for a boiler upgrade this year.
“To us, it’s basically a holding account,” said Chad Dalrymple, energy and capital projects manager for the school district.
Before the grants — when districts just paid money to the trust without seeing any return — the district was “putting out a lot of resistance,” Dalrymple said.
The Opposition NDP and taxpayer groups say it’s foolish to expand the school program in its current form.
“We haven’t heard from any school districts that have had positive experiences with the Pacific Carbon Trust, so the idea of extending it to hospitals and universities would be a mistake,” said Jordan Bateman, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“Hospitals shouldn’t be considered polluters and forced to buy carbon credits. It’s really just a silly waste of money.”
Health authorities and universities are already paying carbon offsets, but don’t have a grant program to recovery any money. The Vancouver Island Health Authority has spent $2.58 million on carbon credits since 2010.
The government should follow through on a promised analysis of the carbon payments to see if the program can be improved, said NDP environment critic Spencer Chandra-Herbert.
“You need to be able to show people the offsets they are paying for are going to end up back supporting them to be more efficient and cut emissions,” he said.
If the ultimate goal is to have carbon offset programs that give back in grants what they take away in payments, Chandra-Herbert questioned why the Environment Ministry is even involved, other than to add a cumbersome level of administration.
