GRUNDY COUNTY, Tenn.—For much of human history, the way to make money from a tree was to chop it down. Now, with companies rushing to offset their carbon emissions, there is value in leaving them standing.
The good news for trees is that the going rate for intact forests has become competitive with what mills pay for logs in corners of Alaska and Appalachia, the Adirondacks and up toward Acadia. That is spurring landowners to make centurylong conservation deals with fossil-fuel companies, which help the latter comply with regulatory demands to reduce their carbon emissions.
For now, California is the only U.S. state with a so-called cap-and-trade system that aims to reduce greenhouse gasses by making it more expensive over time for firms operating in the state to pollute. Preserving trees is rewarded with carbon-offset credits, a climate-change currency that companies can purchase and apply toward a tiny portion of their tab.
But lately, big energy companies, betting that the idea will spread, are looking to preserve vast tracts of forest beyond what they need for California, as part of a burgeoning, speculative market in so-called voluntary offsets. One of the most enthusiastic, BP PLC, has already bought more than 40 million California offset credits since 2016 at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Last autumn, the energy giant invested $5 million in Pennsylvania’s Finite Carbon, a pioneer in the business of helping landowners create and sell credits. The investment is aimed at helping Finite hire more foresters, begin using satellites to measure biomass and drum up more credits for use in the voluntary market.
CA will screw this up. How’s your plan on controlling your environment doing so far? Citizens dying from your environmental decisions of the past, surrounding states suffering from your smoke. Please, do us all a favor and stay away from our environment!
It has always been about money, not the environment
Well the power gets turned off once a day due to “green energy” but hey.’
now they produce more carbon
Insert 2020 and fire devastating 1000 year old trees
Thanks to Democrat mismanagment of forests & the cause of the out of control wildfires, there won't be many trees left to preserve.
Burning
I thought their poor forestry management was causing it to burn down?
Normally if you want lots of trees, you let lumber companies buy the land. They'll plant more trees so they can have stuff to harvest in 5 years.
Saved CO2 was given back to nature in each year’s wild fire, probably more.
Um, sure, unless the fires get to them first.Some giant sequoias already burned.
Well done!
Start replanting when safe
Jokes! The nature recycles its land by fires to renourish the new forest generations. Now humans barb in for silly claims.
What do the Repubs care? Business is business. What does it matter if the business is to preserve the beauty of nature? Trump is my president, I don't have to recycle. I don't have to follow traffic laws. I don't have to give to charity. Here is trump's campaign promises.
Ha..tell that to Vermont ! They burn trees to generate electricity
I like trees. Apparently Democrats don’t. Note the absence of trees in “Big City America” controlled by Democrats.
In Connecticut, big trees kill people when they fall on houses, and cars. We have a big business here of cutting down trees because they are so dangerous. Let’s be reasonable and look at this subject whole-minded.
similar forest🍃
If there are any left. Since California refuses to allow tree thing and strategic burning with low intensity fires, millions of acres are now gone.
Wait! Isn't Liberal environ'mental' ism exactly why California's forests are burning down? Isn't the tree hugging BS and all the rest what set the stage for the massive fires? We need a specific exclusion of lunatic Liberalism so we can have an adult run environmental policy.
Only to be burned down later.
😊
Global warming isn’t real though
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