Carbon Credits

[thunderchicken]

Any of you have any experience with or knowledge of them? There is a lot of info on them on the web but it seems to be all over the place. What I'm mostly interested in knowing about is how they work on timber and ag land. Who qualifies? Who's buying them and how do you go about selling? I know this started out as a liberal move by some nutjobs in Cali but it seems that they are taking off and could be another source of income for landowners. I'm really surprised that the current administration and their "green deal" hasn't pushed this harder.

[dubs]

How much land do you have? I could type a page out on this but in the last several years there have been some more options to come available to private landowners. None of which I have seen as really being financially advantageous to 'average' (loosely utilized term) landowners. This would be my simplest definition of how it works for timberland (others may disagree or expand upon) - You agree not to harvest the timber on your tract (or a portion of your tract) for X time period. A group like NCX (formerly SilviaTerra) will pay you $x per acre to for not harvesting. They then market, package, bundle your 'credits' to a company looking to offset its carbon footprint (due to .gov requirements). They sell company your credits at what they paid you plus their desired/required profit.

So you get some money for delaying harvest - not nearly as much as you would think/hope for, 3rd party company makes money by marketing and selling your carbon credits and a company gets to say 'look at us! We are carbon neutral!!'

Again - this is a super simplified version of things and I may have misused some terminology but that is my general understanding of things.


Good example, I know a consultant who looked into delaying harvest on a couple hundred acres of mature loblolly plantation ready to be clear cut. I think overall, SilviaTerra (now NCX) offered around $1,000 for them to not harvest for one year.


Obviously the more land/timber you have to offer, the more options you begin to have.