VANCOUVER — B.C heavy equipment operators and truckers have come together to create a new program that measures reductions in fuel consumption, reported The Vancouver Sun this morning.

And those reductions are sold back to the Pacific Carbon Trust for cash.

It was on this past Tuesday that a five-year deal was signed with The Carbon Offset Aggregation Co-operative of B.C. and the Pacific Carbon Trust.

The program reduces fuel using a combination of technical and mechanical changes to equipment, interventions and driver awareness. For each tonne of carbon saved, companies are given $12 to $13.

So far, 23 companies have signed up.

MaryAnn Arcand, cooperative chair, told The Vancouver Sun that the "value of fuel saved outweighs the value of the credits and it always will. But it’s an incentive to save the fuel and to save the environment by going greener.

“The actual cash return to the company is in the fuel savings, there is no question. But the social value of contributing to a cleaner environment is priceless.”

Arcand added that big-box stores that market their wood as "forest-certified" have taken notice of the pilot tests by truckers, pointing out that through the program, they could be "green-certified" in how they move their wood. "That’s how we see the branding going down the road,” she said.

Kevin Johnson, senior manager of Coastal Pacific Express out of Surrey, said that their owner-operator trucks go through " a significant amount of fuel," adding that they will provide incentives for the owner-operators to participate.

"Anything we can do to really help the planet and make our owner-operators more viable is something we could get behind,” he told The Vancouver Sun. You can read the full story here.