Canadian pork industry introduces improved greenhouse gas project builder

The Pork Greenhouse Gas Project Builder is a computer based calculator which allows the swine producer to quantify his operation’s greenhouse gas emissions and determine the number of offset credits that will be generated by adopting certain technologies or production practices.

The latest draft is being introduced through a series of workshops and will travel to all areas of the country.

Canadian Pork Council environmental programs coordinator Cedric MacLeod says the software was developed using the best available Canadian science according to ISO 14064 standards and is internationally recognizable.

“The builder is of value because, for the last three years, through the greenhouse gas mitigation program, we’ve talked to producers extensively about different practices that would allow them to manage their greenhouse gas emissions from an operation. However, we weren’t able to provide them with concrete data to back up a lot of the claims that we had on different technologies and practices,” MacLeod said.

“This software package will allow a Canadian pork producer to input production data such as feed usage and ration composition, herd inventories into the system and identify some different practices that are ongoing on the operation and the project builder will actually estimate what kind of greenhouse gas output can be expected from that operation.”

MacLeod notes there are lots of opportunities though regional greenhouse gas carbon markets that have popped up in California, Oregon, the north-eastern US states and there is now an operating market in Alberta as new power generation stations are required to offset emissions if they’re running on some of the dirtier forms of fossil fuels.

Source: Farmscape