Georgia's owners of forest land have long argued that they somehow should get credit for the public service their trees provide: Cleaning the air by absorbing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
Now the state of Georgia is helping create a market for this invisible commodity. Tree growers and farmers could receive payments for storing carbon to reduce global warming.
Carbon dioxide acts like a blanket, trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere. Exhaled constantly by animals, the gas also is released when people burn fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Many factories and power plants, in addition to cars, run on these fuels.
Although the Bush administration has argued that there is no proof that human activity contributes to global warming, a February conference of the world's leading climate scientists reached the opposite conclusion.
The good news is that some of the damage could be slowed: An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report estimates that forest preservation, tree planting and improved farming methods could offset 10 percent to 20 percent of the world's anticipated fuel emissions over the next 50 years.
The Georgia Forestry Commission has developed the only state-run carbon registry in the Southeast and the first in the country focused on small, private landowners, said Josh Love, coordinator of the registry for the commission.
The commission will start enrolling forest acreage in June and expects to develop guidelines for enrolling farmland this summer or fall, he said.
Eligible farmland likely would use low-till or other conservation methods, he said.
The registry is a way for landowners to quantify how much carbon they keep out of the atmosphere.
Companies that want to offset the carbon dioxide they produce could use the registry to find landowners who provide carbon benefits. By paying these people to continue sequestering carbon dioxide, companies could reduce their total damage to the environment.
There are no requirements for companies to do this, but that is expected to change in the near future, said Donald Hendrix, a Savannah-based senior forester for Environmental Services Inc. The company operates in states across the Southeast.
The Bush administration has long argued that it doesn't have the power to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, but the Supreme Court recently ruled that it does.
The EPA is now considering what action to take.
Hendrix, a consultant for private forestland owners, is educating his company's clients about the potential of Georgia's carbon registry. He said it could provide a big boost to the flagging timber industry: The extra payments to forestland owners could enable them to wait longer between harvests, reducing the amount of timber in the market. This could cause timber prices to rise again, increasing profits to timber owners and processors.
"If people can grow their trees longer and still pay their taxes, they're happy to do that," he said. "This will also help water quality because less soil is removed with fewer harvests. ... It's going to be a win-win situation all the way around for the landowner, the environment and the forest industry."
Essentially, the program could create another payment to forestland owners for keeping their trees as they would anyway, Hendrix said.
Those who also earn money by participating in federal conservation programs could theoretically earn three payments (including the actual timber sale profits) for the same acreage.
CREATING NEW MARKETS
Anticipation of future regulations, as well as public relations efforts, have motivated the creation of carbon markets across the country.
In 2006, the Chicago Climate Exchange became the first and only voluntary emissions trading market in North America. Its members include private companies, universities and local governments who commit to capping their emissions. Those who exceed the cap can offset their emissions by buying emissions "credits" from other participants.
Some environmentalists have charged that the market is limited in effectiveness without federal carbon dioxide limits to motivate participation. They also say pledging to keep the status quo - forestland that would be planted in trees anyway - is less effective than requiring companies to reduce their pollution.
Nevertheless, states like California, Michigan and the Dakotas have started different types of voluntary carbon offset programs. Last week, 10 Northeastern states announced the creation of the nation's first mandatory carbon cap-and-trade program.
Here's how the Georgia carbon registry will work: Landowners would apply for their acreage to be added. Certified foresters would inspect the timber on the ground or use computer models to tally how many metric tons of carbon dioxide is being stored there.
The carbon benefits will vary based on the age of the trees, the species, land typography and similar factors, Love said. For example, pine trees store carbon very rapidly. But during long periods of time, hardwoods store more. And longleaf pines store more carbon than other types of pine trees over a long period.
According to the EPA's Web site, Southeast pine plantations can accumulate roughly one metric ton of carbon per acre per year.
Participants in Georgia's registry will be required to provide detailed documentation of how the land has been used in the past decade. They must also have a stewardship plan, tree farm certification and other proof of sustainability, Love said.
The commission will encourage participants to enroll their land for at least five to 10 years so the carbon benefits will last, Love said.
According to the proposed rules for the registry, the forestry commission will provide quality control by visually inspecting at least 10 percent of projects each year, and auditing at least 5 percent by reviewing documents and using satellites to confirm ground cover. If deficiencies are found, the landowner would be given six months to correct them before being removed from the registry.
Love said it's unclear how much staff support will be available for this monitoring.
Southern Company, which owns Georgia Power, would likely use Georgia's carbon registry once federal limits are set for greenhouse gases, said Bob Gehri, principal research specialist with Southern Company Services.
Georgia Power already has funded tree planting to offset some of its emissions. In the 1990s, it subsidized the planting of 14.5 million trees on noncompany land and has planted 3 million on its own land, said Lynn Wallace, Georgia Power spokesman.
Southern Company also established a Longleaf Legacy Program, committing $6 million over 10 years to plant about 5.5 million longleaf pines, including 3.7 million in Georgia.
This would restore about 8,850 acres of the disappearing habitat by 2013, Gehri and Wallace said.
He said the company doesn't tally how many tons of carbon dioxide emissions these trees offset. But Southern Company is a major producer of greenhouse gases.
Georgia Power's Plant Scherer alone emitted 25.2 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2006, Wallace said. Scherer, in Monroe County, is one of the largest coal-fired power plants in the country.
Gehri predicted that Georgia's carbon registry will start a new industry of people who will do the paperwork to monitor carbon credits and pool them to sell on the Chicago market or elsewhere.Macon Telegraph
