Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to talk to you today.
Mr. Chairman and committee members, our presentation is along the lines of Biological Carbon Canada's perspective on the questions before the committee. We would like to concentrate on adaptation and emission reduction strategies.
Biological Carbon Canada is an Alberta-based, multi-sector, non-profit society working to deliver real carbon reductions from Canadian forests, farms and ranches. We seek to be the conduit and facilitator in connecting business and research. Alberta has the innovation and the skill to scale what we know can be done across all of Canada.
Our members have been working to reduce greenhouse gases since the Government of Alberta created the first North American compliance carbon price regulation and offset in 2007. Alberta farms and businesses are leading Canada in reducing carbon emissions. Since Alberta's offset system was implemented in 2007, we have created, serialized and sold 14.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, with half of this through our members.
Why are we here? Simply, Ottawa, we have a problem. Canada, we have a problem. We, as Biological Carbon Canada, along with our members here today, have a solution.
Canada has agreements to drop emissions by the year 2030. Canada needs to remove 89 million tonnes from large final emitters, and through provincial measures. Canada also needs to remove another 86 million tonnes from coal-use elimination, clean-fuel use and energy use in light industry. The last 44 million tonnes that you wish to remove, and that we need to remove, is targeted to come from technology improvements and carbon sinks.
Biological systems in Canada and carbon markets are part of this solution. We're here to help.
We believe that with biological offsets, a Canadian carbon market and new expanded protocols, the biological and unregulated business sector in Canada can deliver between 42 million and 45 million of those tonnes by 2030. Because of the soils, 37 million tonnes will actually come from western Canada.
We believe that if the reductions from biological systems are achieved, the economic stimulus is estimated to be $33 billion in new GDP and 308,000 new jobs.
Our members reiterate that we can adapt. We're going to elaborate a bit more in the area of the carbon sequestration potential for 2030.
We know that we can capture 29 million tonnes with advanced protocols covering smart cropping production. We know that we can capture 1.5 million tonnes with advanced protocols covering smart livestock production, and that we can capture 15 million tonnes with advanced protocols covering smart land and sinks—but I digress.
First and foremost, I'm a fourth-generation food and fibre production engineer from eastern Saskatchewan. My family has been farming since 1904, and I want to describe to you a little bit of what you see in regard to production systems across western Canada and the prairies.
We are using precision-guided equipment with GPS satellite technology to ensure that we have less than an inch of overlap. It's down to an inch of precision. You hear about autonomous vehicles and cars. We've been living in that environment for the last 10 to 15 years. All of our equipment is precision-guided.
What does that allow us to do? It allows us to eliminate that overlap and that duplicity of applying nitrogen twice. Not only does the GPS-guided equipment we're using eliminate overlap, but our machines—our air seeders and our planters—now have the ability to shut off individual sections at the five-foot level, so that you're not.... When you come into a wedge-shaped triangle, or you're going around trees, we have what's called sectional control technology. We can get that down to the single opener that lifts out of the ground to reduce the draft requirements on the tractors, resulting in more emission savings.
When the boot or that seeding tool is in the ground, that fertilizer is being placed so precisely, an inch below and to the side of the seam, that the pearl of fertilizer is being used to its maximum efficiency. Couple that with the soil sampling we're doing.... You look at how we look at fertility requirements, much like you would do in livestock operations. For specific plants, we're able to match that fertility right to the plant's needs.
We're going to get into this more, with regard to how, with precision cropping, we can change rates on the fly, using software with prescription mapping. This is commonplace. It isn't adapted all across, but this is what we're referring to when we talk about smart cropping systems.
To fully capture the 29 million tonnes that Canadian agriculture needs to capture, we need funding to develop and refine the evolving science, and carbon markets. To accomplish this, we will also need to update the direct seeding, or conservation cropping protocol, to cover all of the soil zones across all of Canada. The robust nutrient stewardship protocol also needs to have some expansion done. This is called the NERP, the nitrous oxide emission reduction protocol, or the 4R nutrient stewardship system.
We will also need the people and the science to integrate this new science into these protocols, and increase satellite imaging technology to assist in verification of measurements. We're also going to need to invest in the people, the science and adapting this new science.
With that, I'm going to share the remainder of my time with my colleague, Don.