Bluesource overcame challenging methodological requirements to allow two additional years of crediting for RMC’s Ozone Depleting Substance (ODS) destruction project.
RMC’s project of ensuring the proper collection and safe disposal of ozone depleting substances (ODS) in Canada is a voluntary effort to reduce ODS emissions. RMC administers the single largest ODS collection and destruction program in Canada, which is responsible for more than 80 percent of all surplus ODS from Canadian refrigeration and air conditioning industries collected and destroyed. Our Bluesource team has worked with RMC for five years to quantify, market and sell voluntary offsets from their ODS destruction project.
Diminishing supplies of collected ODS presented a number of challenges, including the quantification of ODS tanks that could not be filled to a full amount of one type of ODS (i.e. a pure tank). Due to the sampling requirements of the offset protocol, the mixed ODS tanks could not be quantified using the original approach.
Our team worked to develop a methodology to address the problem by researching and understanding the operations and processes of RMC’s collection service providers. The team used this information to develop a new methodology for the sampling and quantification of mixed ODS tanks, while ensuring the approach upheld ISO 14064-2 principles of accuracy and conservativeness.
The methodology developed involved the utilization of ODS sampling at smaller quantities before the ODS is aggregated into a larger container. By applying sampling results from multiple smaller containers, the uncertainty associated with one sample representing a large container with mixed ODS was removed. To accomplish this required gathering, inspecting and verifying hundreds of samples from smaller containers and verifying the integrity of the equipment used to measure them. Other sources of data and evidence were also used to provide justification for adapting protocol requirements related to the analysis of mixed ODS.
Over the last five years, our team has quantified over 577,00 tonnes of CO2 equivalent reductions for RMC. Of this total, about 198,000 tonnes in the last two years were as a result of the implementation of the new methodology. The continued crediting of RMC’s ODS destruction program provided critical financial support for RMC to sustain their program.
