Climate

“Grasslands are particularly valuable because they sequester carbon from the atmosphere and sink it into the soil where it's going to be there for a long time. There's hardly anything better than grasslands as a sink for carbon,” said Mark Mark Boyce, a professor of ecology at the University of Alberta.

The stakes for any changes are high, because if adjustments aren’t made appropriately, the sensitive carbon market could be pushed “out of whack” from 2023 to 2030.

Carbon market 'sort of a simple extension' of Alberta's years of practice with the creation and regulation of its oil and gas industry

Trees trap two to three times more carbon than crops

“There's no sort of co-ordinated national approach or national standards, laws, regulations,” said Ryan Ness, director of adaptation at the Canadian Climate Institute.

“We have infrastructure already in place,” said Amit Kumar, professor at the University of Alberta and Alberta Innovates Associate industrial research chair in energy and environmental systems engineering.

The long-haul trucking industry is currently being examined as the future of hydrogen, while electric vehicles are being pegged for personal use.

Most of the hydrogen in the province is produced from natural gas and the process emits C02, which is currently released into the atmosphere.

“The hydrogen sector is moving so fast, it’s almost hard to believe where we’ve come in just the last couple of years,” Premier Jason Kenney said at a hydrogen convention on Tuesday.