Project Spotlight: Growing Greener Veg – West Moberley First Nations’ Geothermal Greenhouse

The West Moberly First Nations is located at the west end of Moberly Lake, BC, roughly 90km southwest of Fort St.John. Like many smaller, more remote communities in Canada, access to low-cost but high-quality fresh vegetables is challenging, as vegetables must be trucked in from hundreds of kilometres away. As a result, many vegetables available for sale locally are, unfortunately, best described as ‘compost ready’! This impacts the nutritional health and wellbeing of the local community, increases the cost of vegetables, and increases GHG emissions from trucking deliveries and from food waste disposal.

To solve this multi-faceted problem, WMFN is proposing a simple solution: growing their own vegetables in a state-of-the-art commercial greenhouse, heated not by burning fossil fuels, but by utilising geothermal energy. The result: cheaper, fresher, higher quality vegetables, local jobs and reduced GHG emissions – a truly sustainable outcome, providing improved social, economic and environmental outcomes!

To help them understand the potential impact of this project from a climate perspective, WMFN engaged Firefly and asked us to complete an assessment of the proposed geothermal project's carbon reduction and carbon offset potential.

The project will comprise a 1 acre (45,000 ft²) commercial greenhouse with space and water heating provided by a 4 MWth geothermal system. Firefly worked with the design team to collect data on the proposed project and then carried out a GHG impact assessment in line with ISO 14064-2. This included identifying and assessing for inclusion all SSRs across the project lifecycle, selecting and justifying an appropriate baseline and building a quantification tool to calculate emissions for the baseline and project. In addition, Firefly provided an assessment of potential 'paths-to-market' for WMFN to create carbon offsets to raise additional revenue from the project, providing an estimation of potential carbon revenues under three different scenarios, including voluntary and compliance carbon markets.

The completed assessment shows that the proposed project will save around 964 t CO₂e/year by reducing GHG emissions from fossil fuels combusted for space and water heating – a reduction of 97% from baseline carbon emissions.

The conclusion (and the pun) is unavoidable; WMFN’s geothermal greenhouse project will truly be growing some ‘green’ vegetables!