A new profit centre for Vancouver: Cyclists on the Burrard Bridg

Green dreams often have one underlying economic challenge. They cost money. Lots of it.

Whether it’s Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s $45-million bicycle bridge, bringing electric cars to the city or the multitude of other, high-tech ways to move toward a carbon-neutral metropolis, the new technologies and infrastructures all tend to bleed the budget.

Where, in the current economic climate, will the green to be green come from?

Actually, in many cases it might come from those green projects themselves. Let me introduce you to the magical world of carbon finance, where reducing greenhouse gases can make you cash.

It works like this: If you introduce a green technology or process that reduces the release of carbon dioxide into the air, you can claim a carbon credit. Those credits — a carbon credit is one tonne of CO2 kept out of the atmosphere per year — are bought by people, companies or governments trying to offset their own carbon dioxide pollution, which scientists say is contributing to global warming.

Here, using some simple math, is how Robertson’s green dreams might generate some cash for his city. Warning: There is some arithmetic below.

Let’s consider the Burrard Street Bridge and its new bicycle lane.

Before beginning its carbon finance scheme, the city would have to prove the creation of that bicycle lane is really taking cars off the road. Let’s assume, however, that’s the case and that by next year there will be 1,000 new cyclists commuting, say 10 kilometres a day, and leaving their gas-guzzlers at home.

Since the average car spews out about 250 grams of CO2 per kilometre, that would mean each cyclist would be keeping 2.5 kilograms of CO2 out of the atmosphere every week. Over a year that would add up to an individual bicyclist saving 650 kilos in carbon dioxide emissions. That would equal O.65 carbon credits. 

What does that mean in dollars? Well at the going rate of the B.C. government’s value for a carbon credit — it now pays $25 to offset one tonne of carbon dioxide — that would mean every year each cyclist would generate $16.25. So, a thousand bicyclists would potentially add up to $16,250 a year in carbon profits. 

Now imagine this concept on a larger scale, say with the mayor’s hope of supplanting fossil-fuelled cars with carbon-dioxide-free electric cars.

Let’s assume, once again, 1,000 drivers switch over from gas guzzlers to e-cars because of the initiative. The average driver drives about 20,000 kilometres a year, creating five tonnes of CO2 emissions. Each e-car driver, therefore, would keep five tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

That means five carbon credits per driver every year. At the going rate of a carbon credit in British Columbia — remember, it’s $25 a credit — each driver would generate $125 worth of carbon credits a year. One thousand drivers would collectively create $125,000 in carbon revenues. Convince 10,000 drivers to switch to e-cars and you would create $1.25 million in carbon revenue. Get up to 100,000 e-cars on the road and you’d be up to more than $12 million.

Now, you may wonder who on earth would buy carbon credits like these.

Well, the size of the carbon market may surprise you. It already is measured in the billions of dollars. Banks, oil companies, cement companies, taxi companies, even green-minded individuals — anyone who wants to voluntarily cut their carbon footprint or has been ordered to by government — are potential buyers.

It’s not all as easy as it sounds, of course.

To make those carbon credits valid, a city would need to hire people to audit behavioural shifts, to ensure carbon footprints are being reduced. Will those cyclists sneak out in their cars on a rainy day, secretly increasing their carbon footprints? Will the guy with that e-car go joyriding in his Mustang on weekends? Or will an e-car driver buy a condo closer to work, and not really be the carbon pig we expected?

It’s obviously complex. But there are already businesses with sophisticated software programs working this stuff out, to monetize carbon.

For Vancouver’s new green mayor — any mayor actually — carbon should now be part of the bottom line.

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