CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Some members of Charlottesville City Council are advocating pausing the city’s carbon offset program with BP for a year as the city looks for a better offset program.

The city stood ready to renew a $300,000 contract with BP in which the city purchases certified carbon offsets to compensate for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions produced by city and customer natural gas usage. It’s an opt-out program that City Council endorsed in 2019 and adds about 60-cents a month to the average bill, according to the city carbon offset webpage.

BP is tasked with using the money toward renewable energy projects around the world, and at least three Councilors expressed skepticism about the company’s selections.

According to the city rundown, some of the projects Charlottesville’s money has been used for are a wind farm in Argentina, a solar photovoltaic project in India, and improved forest management right here in the United States in the state of Michigan.

During Monday’s meeting, City Councilor Natalie Oschrin got the conversation going when she was told the city has some input in the projects that BP can use the money to invest in, but it’s the company that has the ultimate control.

“I think if we do have any kind of say in the direction of where we can point that money to its highest best use, definitely not a wind farm funding an oil rig,” Oschrin said.

“My perspective is I don’t think it should be renewed for a year,” said City Council Michael Payne. “I think we’d be better off investing that money into local initiatives, and I just structurally don’t think there is a way for those BP carbon offsets to accomplish what we want.”

Councilor Lloyd Snook, the longest running member of Council since 2020, shed some light on the thinking back in 2019 when Council approved the BP arrangement.

“As I recall, when we looked at numbers, we decided it would be basically impossible to duplicate the numbers that BP was telling us they were giving us,” Snook said. “You mentioned it would mean basically planting a forest three times the city of Charlottesville, but if the numbers BP is giving us are bogus2, then all bets are off.”

According to the city carbon offset website, “The certified carbon offset projects supported by Charlottesville Gas were verified by Verra and its Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program and by American Carbon Registry (ACR) and its stringent ACR Standard, both endorsed by the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA).

But Snook remains skeptical.

“I’ve always thought that notion of paying for carbon offsets for something that’s happening halfway around the world that we can’t personally verify, I’ve never been very happy about that,” said Snook. “My inclination is to say if I had a choice between sending money to BP for things that I’m not sure I trust them on versus doubling the size of our weatherization budget locally, my bias would be towards doubling the size of our local weatherization budget.”

City Manager Sam Sanders told Council if this $300,000 is taken out of the equation, the budget needs to be redone.

“My perspective is not to renew for a year, and I think we have partner organizations like LEAP doing work on the ground that could easily deploy $300,000 and have some sort of counting about carbon reductions through the weatherization and energy efficiency work that they do,” Payne said.

Monday night was the first of two readings in the motion Council was considering in setting the utility rates.

If Council is inclined to do this pause, they’ll have to amend the budget in the next meeting when the utility rates come up for decision after their second reading.