I have never been a morning person…and I’m a west coaster to boot. So a 5.45am Eastern wake-up call was, it must be said, painful in the extreme. Nevertheless by 6.30am I was sitting in a bus with my two intrepid and bleary-eyed Climate Registry colleagues, Robyn Camp and Sam Hitz, along with around 40 scientists, engineers and hydro specialists on a Hydro Québec-sponsored trip to James Bay. Or Baie James, as the locals call it.
And to think that the journey to James Bay started in Chicago in June, at our annual Board meeting. One of the things The Climate Registry does is develop protocols for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions. Our General Reporting Protocol – or GRP – is really our bible for measuring all kinds of emission sources from any number of sectors. But there are some sectors – such as the electric power sector – that are fairly unique, and that need additional guidance. So we developed an Electric Power Sector Protocol, which included a small section on the emissions associated with hydro power. It was up for approval at our Board meeting.
Turns out that a number of scientists believe that the available guidance – which was issued by the IPCC (that really smart group of scientists who won the Nobel Peace Prize a few years back) – doesn’t necessarily work for every type of hydro reservoir. And that we don’t yet have accurate enough measurement techniques. So the Board – led by a small but vocal Canadian contingent – made the reporting of reservoir emissions to The Registry optional. They also recommended that The Registry convene a workshop to talk about the current state of the science.
Let me start by saying that I am by no means an expert on this issue…that would be our policy guru, Sam. In fact back on the bus, as I scanned the crowd of people who clearly lived and breathed scientific journals for a living, I was secretly hoping that somewhere, someone had written “Reservoir emissions for dummies”. But it turns out that spending two days with said scientists was all the education I needed.
Day one was Hydro Quebec’s trip out to James Bay, which was spectacular. As a feat of engineering and human endeavour alone, their hydro-electric facilities take your breath away. But as the Canadian Regional Director who has done a lot of traveling across Canada, I was also blown away once again by Canada’s size and scope. We are so massive, so diverse. We have trees that are only a couple of feet high after 25 years of growing up there. We eat caribou for lunch. We exist in temperatures and climates that are insane. And, no matter where you go, we apologize when someone steps on our toes. So Canadian.
Day two was the workshop, and we were lucky: turned out that an International Hydroelectric Association/UNESCO meeting was already taking place in Montreal in September. So it was a no-brainer for us to line our workshop up with theirs, and take advantage of the fact that experts from around the world were in the same place at the same time.
And so it happened that on 17 September 2009, the first-ever Climate Registry technical workshop on measuring reservoir emissions took place. There were the usual technical nightmares (if anyone out there ever runs a dial-in/webcast that actually works without any problems, please let us know your secrets…), but all-in-all it was a tremendous day. As ever at Registry events there was a compelling mix of people in attendance: regulators, scientists, policy people, and a few others mixed in for good measure.
Turns out I didn’t need Reservoir Emissions for Dummies after all…the speakers walked us through how reservoir emissions are potentially produced, how they are currently being measured, and the challenges associated with measuring reservoir emissions when each site has its own particular set of characteristics. Whether a reservoir is in a temperate or tropical climate, for example, makes a big difference in terms of the emissions produced.
We weren’t necessarily gunning for solutions at the workshop. But it was useful to have the discussion, given the likelihood that we are moving into a carbon-constrained era. It will become increasingly important to scientifically prove just how hydro stacks up not only against the more carbon-intensive coal and oil & gas sectors, but against its fellow renewables like wind and solar. Sam madly made notes during the workshop so that he could distill it all into an executive summary for our website, and we’re hoping that will be a useful resource for all of those people thinking about this issue.
By 4pm we were done…I’d hit the wall some time around noon, but, after consuming anything with caffeine in it, was on at least my third or fourth wind. The speaker from London was flying home right away. One of the Americans and the Norwegian were going to a Canadiens hockey game – after the Norwegian told us a story of tagging a fish with “099” and dubbing it Wayne Gretzky (of course). Robyn practiced her French on our French presenter (while I nodded, unknowingly). I found out that the two people from the National Hydroelectric Association were marathoners, and had been to James Bay 25 years before. And so it went, reminding me of the privilege of working for a North American organization that can bring this kind of group together. A good day.
