Quantifying soil organic carbon sequestration performance of the City of Calgary Willow Biomass and Marginal Land Reclamation Demonstration Project: Assessing provincial carbon emissions offset credit opportunities

The emerging emissions trading market provides the province of Alberta an opportunity to diversify its economy and drive climate change mitigation innovation. By improving the carbon credit generating efficiency, more economic opportunities and carbon sequestration industrial applications become feasible. The City of Calgary Dewatered Biosolids Land Application – Willow Biomass and Marginal Land Reclamation Demonstration Project represents part of the first wave of large-scale biologically driven greenhouse gas mitigation innovation. In this case, carbon sequestration is a beneficial by-product of sustainable waste water management practices. However in the future, when potential projects and opportunities are more deliberately assessed on the bases of their sustainable development merits, triple-bottom-line scores, carbon emissions trading value, and soil reclamation potential, a proposed projects carbon sequestration potential may provide enough added value to tip the balance towards selecting biogenic based waste water residual management projects over less sustainable options.

Faculty Supervisor:

Stephen Murphy

Student:

Chelsey Greene

Partner:

SYLVIS Environmental Services

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

Program: