School board vice-chair Trish Bella is steering clear of a brewing controversy over the fairness of the provincial government's carbon offset scheme.
School District 57 pays roughly $200,000 a year to Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT), a Crown corporation the provincial government established in 2008 to purchase credits on behalf of public sector bodies to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
Critics contend Prince George school district is paying more than its fair share when calculated on a per-student basis.
The amount this school district pays out works out to roughly $17 per student compared to just $9 per student in the Langley school district.
Moreover, they note the foregone cash is funding greenhouse gas reduction projects at luxury hotels and resorts. Of the 15 projects listed in a "project showcase" section on the PCT website, 10 are for hybrid heating systems at these operations, half of them in Whistler.
But rather than raising a storm of protest, Bella said trustees prefer to focus on lowering the district's bill by reducing emissions. And to that end they're in the process of establishing an environmental sustainability committee.
Not to be confused with carbon offsets, the school district receives a 100-per-cent rebate from the province for the carbon tax. That added up to $74,000 in 2009 and is expected to top $90,000 in 2010 due to the hike on July 1.
All the money rebated is earmarked for energy-efficiency initiatives.
"What it's been able to do is to provide the dollars for lighting upgrades and energy efficiency upgrades to schools," Bella said.
Projects this year have included lighting upgrades at Prince George secondary school and Ecole Lac des Bois.
The committee will also look at opportunities to attract funding for projects aimed a greenhouse gas reduction, Bella said, perhaps from PCT itself.
School District 57 missed out on a chance to secure money from a federal-provincial program for solar panels - 11 other school districts, as well as a half dozen post-secondary schools and two health authorities received a share of $2.8 million in November.
But there is no doubt the school district's footprint would have been much larger if not for the new Duchess Park secondary school, which features geothermal heating and a sensor system that dims and brightens lights and raises and lowers temperatures as needed.
