forest carbon

Many people are wary of carbon credits because they don’t know how the carbon has been verified. Sierra Business Council’s Sierra Nevada Carbon Cooperative (SNCC) inventories, verifies and sells carbon credits as a sustaining revenue stream for stewardship and restoration in the Sierra’s forestlands and watersheds. This revenue stream will provide incentive to manage and restore forested properties, promoting sustainable landscapes and preventing forest conversion. This is especially crucial for forested land threatened by development.

SNCC follows a very transparent process for measuring forest carbon:

Step 1: Sierra Business Council does a preliminary assessment of the potential forest carbon project, including assessing project type (avoided conversion or improved forest management on private lands) and the landowner’s commitment to permanence as well as to native forests.

Step 2: We work with a Registered Professional Forester to do a Forest Inventory Assessment (FIA), specifically designed to measure forest carbon and provide a “Nonindustrial Timber Management Plan” (NTMP) as required by the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) protocols.

Step 3: We register the carbon credits with a verified carbon registry, such as CAR.

Step 4: We work with the landowner to verify the carbon credits with a registered third-party organization (trained by CAR).

Step 5: We work with each landowner to define a specific strategy for selling offsets in a manner which provides the greatest benefit to both the buyer and the seller.

Step 6: In the long term, we assist in the annual monitoring and recertification of the carbon credits (periodic verifications every 6 years and re-inventory every 18 years). We also assist in the development of a forest management and monitoring plan (consistent with CAR’s Natural Forest Management Practices).

The Sierra Nevada Carbon Cooperative is a dynamic all-encompassing solution to protecting Sierra Nevada Ecosystems. It incorporates environmental as well as economic benefits. Healthy functioning forestlands provide clean water, cycle nutrients, prevent erosion, purify air and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Selling carbon credits provides landowners the funds needed to continue stewardship of these forests and to perpetuate forested land as open space into the future.

You’ve heard the buzz words: carbon credits, carbon sequestration, sustainable forestry and forest products, biomass utilization, cogeneration …the list goes on and on.  But while each of these initiatives are important on their own, it’s interesting to step back and look at how they fit together to create the forest carbon cycle.  Balanced in the correct way, there is the potential for a sustainable cycle of carbon sequestration by forests, storage of carbon in sustainably-harvested wood products, and substitution of biomass for fossil fuels in energy production.  The following picture created by Sierra Pacific Industries provides a good visual:

Here’s how it works (in an ideal world):  Let’s start with atmospheric carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.  Forests, through the process of photosynthesis, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their trees’ biomass.  The carbon is continuously stored in wood products made from certified sustainably harvested timber, revitalizing the timber industry that is currently struggling in the Sierra (see our post about the mill closing near Sonora for proof).  Sustainable fuels management operations also produce biomass that is used instead of fossil fuels for energy production.  By removing these fuels, not only are we creating a renewable source of energy, we are also reducing risk of catastrophic wildfire (check out the US Forest Service’s upcoming “Forests With  a Future” that focuses on fuels reduction to prevent forest fires in the Sierra Nevada).  Biomass-fired power plants use combined heat and power technologies to efficiently produce reliable carbon-neutral heat and electricity for surrounding communities while simultaneously creating green jobs.   At the end of their useful life, wood products are recycled for bio-energy, doubling their carbon benefit.  When trees die or their biomass is burned for energy, their stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere, and the cycle begins again as new trees absorb the CO2.  Take a look at this poster from The Forest Foundation for another depiction of the system.

What role do carbon offsets play in this cycle?  A carbon offset is an incentive for forest landowners to take the additional steps to create and maintain the sustainable cycle described above.  By putting a monetary value on the services forests provide, they are creating a new source of revenue for communities that participate and work to make this sustainable vision a reality.  Many barriers exist to creating this idealized system, and there is still a long way to go, but it is something to keep in mind as we work towards mitigating climate change and creating strong, localized communities in the Sierra Nevada.

It’s an exciting time to be involved in the carbon world.  Historic legislation that would create a mandatory cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions in the US has passed the House Committee of Energy and Commerce, and just yesterday was filed with the Rules Committee by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, dubbed ACES or Waxman-Markey after the bill’s sponsors, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), would regulate CO₂ emissions for the first time in US history.  If the details of the 946-page beast escape you, check out this quick Grist summary.

The bill has been supported by many as a first step, but also criticized as an expensive compromise that is too watered down in its emission and renewable energy targets to be significant in halting climate change.  The CO₂ emission reduction targets in Waxman-Markey of 80% below 2005 emission levels are well below the IPCC recommendation of a reduction to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.  The difference between the two emissions scenarios is largely a question of political and economic feasibility, not just the best science, as explained in this article.

If ACES won’t fully mitigate climate change, then the key to the success of the bill hinges on what adaptation strategies it lays out.  And here there is room for optimism.  The bill establishes a National Climate Change Adaptation Council and National Climate Change Adaptation Program that will distribute periodic assessment reports, chaired through NOAA.  Funding for these adaptation measures would come from the sale of emission permits, with 2-8% of the total revenue going to domestic and international adaptation.

The question of adaptation is particularly salient in the Sierra Nevada, where climate impacts are predicted to be significant.  The latest science from the California Climate Change Center predicts a 25-40% reduction in snowpack by mid century, earlier spring melt and increased risk of flooding, and a 12-52% increase in the number of large wildfires by the end of the century.  Our Sierra Nevada forest ecosystems have survived for thousands of years.  But are they resilient enough to weather the 3-10.5°F of predicted warming?  Forest carbon projects are unique in that they both mitigate and adapt to a changing climate - making them an appealing form of offsets.  They mitigate climate change by trapping and storing CO₂ long-term, and they adapt to climate change by promoting healthy, sustainably managed, old-growth structure forests that reduce fire risk and promote a wealth of other environmental co-benefits.  The more resilient our forests, the better they can weather a changing climate.

So yes, ACES is a compromise, but what legislation isn’t?  Perhaps the issue of compromise was best stated by New York Times writer Paul Krugman in a May 2009 Op-Ed column, “Waxman-Markey is imperfect, it’s disappointing in some respects, but it’s action we can take now. And the planet won’t wait.”  Well said, Mr. Krugman.  The forests of the Sierra Nevada won’t wait either.