Published: April 05, 2009 09:58 am      

Forest owners can sell carbon credits for trees

IRVINE — Justin Maxson admits that the concept he's been explaining to Appalachian landowners is a little difficult to wrap your mind around:

"There's an odorless, colorless gas that is sucked out of the air by your trees, and somebody's going to pay you for that."

The gas is carbon dioxide, or CO2, which contributes to global warming. Industries that produce it, and want to reduce their carbon footprint, are willing to pay when healthy trees do what they do naturally, which is absorb the CO2 and store it.

Because the trees must be in forests that are well managed, a side benefit is that the region's long-abused forests could finally get some respect. That, in turn, is good news for wildlife and water quality.

No money has changed hands yet, mostly because the program is voluntary and the recession has lowered the amount of money that companies are willing to spend. But legislation is looming that could limit CO2 emissions and push up prices.

Maxson is executive director of the Berea-based Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, which is lining up people with forest land and walking them through the steps needed to sell carbon credits. In the emerging world of carbon credits trading, MACED is called an aggregator. It calls its program the Forest Opportunities Initiative.

Aggregators are especially needed in a state such as Kentucky, where nearly half the land is forested, but 89 percent of the forests are owned by private landowners. The average woods is just 26 acres. MACED's plan is to group many parcels together, and, when the price is right, sell their credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange.

So far, MACED has signed up 30 people who own altogether more than 16,000 acres of woods, nearly all of it in eastern Kentucky.

The organization figures that wooded acres already enrolled are taking up 57,300 tons of CO2 in a year. Using the Environmental Protection Agency's online Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, that equals the emissions used to generate electricity for nearly 8,000 homes for a year, or from burning 299 rail cars of coal.

MACED began working on the carbon credits program nearly three years ago, but only started signing up landowners about 16 months ago.

The first person signed up was Jack Stickney, who with wife Teresa and son Caleb owns a farm that stretches over 133 knobby Estill County hills.

Stickney is what Tina Marie Johnson, a MACED program associate, calls "an early adopter."

He has a geology degree and works for the Kentucky Rural Water Association. On the farm, he raises a few head of cattle and cuts some hay, and inoculates rows of oak logs so that they produce shiitake mushrooms.

About 100 acres of the farm is in woods. When he bought it two decades ago, the forest suffered from two centuries of what is called "high-grading" cutting the best trees and leaving those what were crooked, broken, or of little commercial value.

Now blue paint marks trees that will be taken out so that those remaining will get more light and water and absorb more carbon dioxide.

Landowners often wait until their forests are 70 or 80 years old before high-grading. Being in the carbon credit program will allow limited logging of higher quality timber. Scott Shouse, a MACED forester, estimated that the equivalent of one oak tree with a trunk 18 inches in diameter can be cut from each acre each year. Because the timber will be from a sustainable forest, it will bring more money.

That, and the money from selling the carbon credits, is expected to make the program popular.

"I think it's going to get me and other woodland owners to say 'Hey, maybe there's a reason to manage my woodlands,'" Stickney said. "You know how it is when it comes down to money. That gets people's interest."

In Elliott County, Frank Olson also says he sees a lot of high-grading.

In 1971, he and his wife Ann bought 100 acres across the road from where she had lived when she was a VISTA volunteer.

The only time trees have been cut on their land since was for salvage logging after a couple of storms.

The Olsons are enrolled in the carbon credits program and hope their neighbors will get involved.

"Contrary to what people believe, there's not a lot of money for the landowner in logging," Frank Olson said. "It makes sense to help replace the tobacco income with carbon credits."

The process of getting landowners certified so their credits can be traded takes time. There has to be a plan to manage the forest, and an inventory of what is there. The plan can be done by the state Division of Forestry at no charge, but a consulting forester charges for the inventory. MACED will lend money for the inventory, with payback coming when credits are sold. So far, 15 landowners, representing 6,800 acres, have made it all the way through the process.



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