Forest Carbon Offset Projects Research Articles

An exploratory study on forest carbon markets in Asia

Based on expert interviews and a structured survey with over 50 experts and industry leaders, this research provides a snapshot of forest carbon market development in Asia and offers future perspectives of challenges and opportunities. This study suggests that the carbon market is in the first generation of rigorous forest carbon standards programs. Those surveyed reflected a guardedly optimistic view that these markets will continue to be one of the solutions to address climate change. Interest in forest carbon projects was highest for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” (REDD) and for afforestation/reforestation project types. The resonance of biodiversity conservation and community development associated with forest carbon offset projects remains attractive. Compared with other types of carbon credits, those from forest carbon are generally considered rich in co-benefits. The higher social and biodiversity benefits should therefore continue to be favored by companies (e.g. those with corporate social responsibility programs) and individuals in the voluntary market. With respect to quality of carbon credits, the quality brought about through co-benefits from the projects were the highest-rated concern factors, although the project developer experience with carbon projects was also close to the top. Additionality, leakage, permanence, baselines, monitoring and verification are all cornerstones of the quality of forest carbon credits and should have direct impacts on the market price of carbon credits.

The use of airborne laser scanning to develop a pixel-based stratification for a verified carbon offset project

BackgroundThe voluntary carbon market is a new and growing market that is increasingly important to consider in managing forestland. Monitoring, reporting, and verifying carbon stocks and fluxes at a project level is the single largest direct cost of a forest carbon offset project. There are now many methods for estimating forest stocks with high accuracy that use both Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) and high-resolution optical remote sensing data. However, many of these methods are not appropriate for use under existing carbon offset standards and most have not been field tested.ResultsThis paper presents a pixel-based forest stratification method that uses both ALS and optical remote sensing data to optimally partition the variability across an ~10,000 ha forest ownership in Mendocino County, CA, USA. This new stratification approach improved the accuracy of the forest inventory, reduced the cost of field-based inventory, and provides a powerful tool for future management planning. This approach also details a method of determining the optimum pixel size to best partition a forest.ConclusionsThe use of ALS and optical remote sensing data can help reduce the cost of field inventory and can help to locate areas that need the most intensive inventory effort. This pixel-based stratification method may provide a cost-effective approach to reducing inventory costs over larger areas when the remote sensing data acquisition costs can be kept low on a per acre basis.

Managing Forests because Carbon Matters: Integrating Energy, Products, and Land Management Policy

Abstract The United States needs many different types of forests: some managed for wood products plus other benefits, and some managed for nonconsumptive uses and benefits. The objective of reducing global greenhouse gases (GHG) requires increasing carbon storage in pools other than the atmosphere. Growing more forests and keeping forests as forests are only part of the solution, because focusing solely on the sequestration benefits of the forests misses the important (and substantial) carbon storage and substitution GHG benefits of harvested forest products, as well as other benefits of active forest management.Forests and global climate are closely linked in terms of carbon storage and releases, water fluxes from the soil and into the atmosphere, and solar energy capture. Understanding how carbon dynamics are affected by stand age, density, and management and will evolve with climate change is fundamental to exploiting the capacity for sustainably managed forests to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. For example, even though temperate forests continue to be carbon sinks, in western North America forest fires and tree mortality from insects are converting some forests into net carbon sources.Expanding forest biomass use for biofuels and energy generation will compete with traditional forest products, but it may also produce benefits through competition and market efficiency. Short-rotation woody crops, as well as landowners' preferences—based on investment-return expectations and environmental considerations, both of which will be affected by energy and environmental policies—have the potential to increase biomass supply.Unlike metals, concrete, and plastic, forest products store atmospheric carbon and have low embodied energy (the amount of energy it takes to make products), so there is a substitution effect when wood is used in place of other building materials. Wood used for energy production also provides substitution benefits by reducing the flow of fossil fuel–based carbon emissions to the atmosphere.The value of carbon credits generated by forest carbon offset projects differs dramatically, depending on the sets of carbon pools allowed by the protocol and baseline employed. The costs associated with establishing and maintaining offset projects depend largely on the protocols' specifics. Measurement challenges and relatively high transaction costs needed for forest carbon offsets warrant consideration of other policies that promote climate benefits from forests and forest products but do not require project-specific accounting.Policies can foster changes in forest management and product manufacture that reduce carbon emissions over time while maintaining forests for environmental and societal benefits. US policymakers should take to heart the finding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Fourth Assessment Report when it concluded that “In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre, or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.” A rational energy and environmental policy framework must be based on the premise that atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are increasing primarily because of the addition of geologic fossil fuel–based carbon into the carbon cycle. Forest carbon policy that builds on the scientific information summarized in this article can be a significant and important part of a comprehensive energy policy that provides for energy independence and carbon benefits while simultaneously providing clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and other uses and values.

A retrospective and lessons learned from Natural Resources Canada’s Forest 2020 afforestation initiative

Canada is seeking cost-effective means to mitigate anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2, that have been linked to global climate change. In 2003 the Government of Canada launched the Forest 2020 Plantation Development and Assessment Initiative to assess the potential for fast-growing woody crops to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Across the country 6000 ha of plantations were established and monitored on nonforested lands (afforestation) using a variety of methods. Economic analyses assessed the investment attractiveness of this mitigation measure for a range of species and suitable lands, taking into account such factors as growth rates, agricultural opportunity costs and a range of possible carbon values. Analyses illustrated that at current trading prices for carbon and for much of the available lands and expanding markets for forest bioproducts, expected rates of return on investment for afforestation were relatively low. However, higher future carbon prices, combined with monetary values for environmental benefits, could dramatically change the economics of afforestation in the future. Key words: afforestation, carbon sequestration, forest carbon offset project, climate change mitigation, policy analysis, risk analysis, forest investment analysis, hybrids, hybrid poplar, fast-growing trees

Fuel Loading and the Potential for Carbon Emissions from Fire Following Two Shelterwood Harvest Treatments in Southern Ohio

The purpose of this paper is to report the fuel load following shelterwood harvest of two intensities (70% residual stocking and 50% residual stocking), the total carbon content contained in these fuels, and the potential carbon emissions from fire. And the fuel load includes forest litter, woody and herbaceous plants and dead wood. The research results show that the forest litter and the woody plants display significantly greater carbon content than herbaceous plants. The forest litter represents 36.6%, 50.9% and 66.0% of the total fuel load for the 50% treatment, 70% treatment and control respectively. Coarse woody debris accounts for 58.4%, 48.0%and 32.6% of the total fuel load for the 50% treatment, 70% treatment and control respectively. Small woody and herbaceous materials contribute very little to the fuel loading in all treatments. The total fuel loading was determined to be 54.07 t/ha, 41.98 t/ha and 20.73 t/ha for the 50% treatment, 70% treatment, and the control, respectively. If all these fuels were consumed in a wildfire, it is estimated that the total carbon compound emissions from a fire would be 90.39 t/ha, 70.19 t/ha, and 34.66 t/ha, in the same respective order. The harvesting treatments produced more 1~10 hours fuels than the control, although not significantly between them. The 50% treatment and 70% treatment produced 25.08 t/ha and 23.47 t/ha of 1~10 hours fuels, respectively, compared to 14.38 t/ha in the control. A prescribed fire would more likely consume only the fuels in this fuel category, thus emitting 41.93 t/ha, 39.24 t/ha and 23.55 t/ha of carbon compounds from the 50% treatment, 70% treatment, and the control, respectively. This study may be worthwhile to account for the reduction in carbon emissions obtained when prescribed burns are implemented as a fuel reduction strategy in forest carbon offset projects.

Opportunities, challenges and markets for forest carbon offset projects

Forest-based activities can mitigate climate change by reducing carbon sources and enhancing carbon sinks. Under various emissions-reductions programs, credits (called carbon offsets) can be issued to forestry projects that can credibly demonstrate additional and lasting reductions in CO2 emissions. The greatest potential for forest carbon offset projects currently exists in voluntary emissions reduction programs and markets, which, however, have a negligible value in the global carbon market. Unless their relevance can be proven, forestry-based carbon offset projects will play a minor role in compliance markets. This is mainly due to concerns about the additionality, permanence, and leakage of carbon offsets generated by forestry projects. Key words: forest carbon offset project, emissions trading program, cap and trade, carbon market

Improving LULUCF Offset Projects: A Carbon Performance Standard and Ecosystem Services

The performance standard procedure, a quantitative method for quantifying baseline greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or removals, provides an alternative approach to the project-by-project methods currently being used in most GHG offset programs. By providing a top-down approach to assessing the three main technical offset accounting elements (setting the baseline, identifying leakage, and monitoring), this approach has the advantage of providing a broader analytical framework for addressing the issues and the ability to focus project developers in areas where such issues can be addressed more comprehensively. In addition, this top-down approach gives the performance standard developer the opportunity to consider the ecosystem services and human impacts in the analysis of where and what types of forestry projects should occur within a geographic area. Although further field study is required to understand the full implementation considerations involved, this procedure has the potential to help reduce some of the current reasons identified for the slow development of forest carbon offset projects to date.

Markets for Forest Carbon Offset Projects

Markets for Forest Carbon Offset Projects