TerraPass Projects

Support Greater Lebanon Refuse Authority

  Each month in 2013 you will have the opportunity to support a specific project through the purchase of carbon offsets. This month we are excited to feature Greater Lebanon Refuse Authority (GLRA) located in Lebanon, PA.   Why GLRA is a great project: Overall commitment to the environment. In addition to their landfill gas to energy project they have also installed a… read more →

Panel report on Tontitown project now available

As regular readers know, TerraPass recently conducted a full review of the Tontitown landfill methane flaring project, a project in our portfolio that came under heavy criticism in an article in BusinessWeek magazine. We investigated the allegations in the BusinessWeek article, wrote up our conclusions, and submitted those conclusions to an outside panel of experts for a final determination on… read more →

Tontitown update: the report is complete

Our final report on the Tontitown project is available. It is now in the hands of our expert committee, and they've already shown themselves to be highly engaged, hitting us with a good list of questions about the project particulars. As laid out in the review process, all such questions have been appended to the public report, along with our… read more →

Tontitown update: interview with ADEQ

We're nearing the conclusion of our data-gathering for the additionality review. The report should be in the hands of our review panel by the end of this week. We had an opportunity last week to interview the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. These folks are the source of the most serious charges in the BusinessWeek article. To recap, ADEQ contends… read more →

TreeHugger takes a peek at Tontitown

If you're not sick of Tontitown yet, check out TreeHugger's great interview with Wes Muir from Waste Management, the developer of the landfill gas project that was criticized by BusinessWeek. The interview covers some of the same ground we've covered in our project review site, but in a vastly more readable form. Wes reiterates two key points about the Tontitown… read more →

Tontitown: the regulatory test

The regulatory test is the big hurdle for Tontitown. Regulatory compulsion is a death knell for additionality. Although it is indisputably true that Waste Management was under no strict requirement to implement a methane flaring system, it is also true that WM used the methane flaring system to correct a groundwater contamination problem that it was under pressure to fix.… read more →

Review process and review panel

With the addition of Dan Kammen, our review panel is now complete. Dr. Kammen is a professor in the Energy and Resources Group, Professor of Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy and Professor of Nuclear Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the founding Director of the Renewable… read more →

Tontitown: the financial test

One of the most intuitively appealing additionality tests is also among the most controversial with environmental policy types. The financial test asks whether the revenue from carbon offsets are enough to tip the budgetary scales so that a money-losing project becomes breakeven or profitable. Deep down, this is what most of us believe additionality is all about. If wind energy… read more →

Tontitown: the timing test

Perhaps the simplest additionality criterion is the timing test. The timing test asks whether the timing of the project is compatible with the notion that carbon offsets played a role in its development. So, for example, projects that are too old will fail a timing test. No one was considering revenue from carbon offsets thirty years ago when the oil… read more →

Taking a look at Tontitown

I've laid enough groundwork at this point that it's time to start digging into the particulars of the Tontitown landfill gas flaring project. Tontitown isn't the only project criticized in the BusinessWeek article, but it is the one with by far the most substantive set of accusations behind it. Most of the criticisms in the article are quotes from individuals… read more →
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