Mississippi Forest Owner Among First to Earn Payment for Carbon Sequestration Practices
-Landowners Earn Average of $1,000 from AgraGate Carbon Credits Sales
For Julian Watson of Jackson, Mississippi, enrolling his 200 acres of Holmes County loblolly pines in the carbon credits market last fall required a fair amount of research. In the end, though, was an easy decision.
“I told my 96-year-old mother we’re getting paid for cleaning the air,” Watson said. “It sounds like Santa Claus, but it’s real.”
Watson, who serves on the board of the Mississippi Forest Association, is one of 269 forest owners in 16 states who this month received checks totaling $273,000 from the sale of carbon credits marketed by AgraGate Climate Credits Corporation. The money was the first installment forest owners will receive during the 15-year contract term.
“I got my first check last week,” Watson said. “I’d like to see higher prices, and maybe we’ll get them with a new president.”
The funds represent the first sale of Exchange Forestry Offsets (XFOs) by AgraGate on the Chicago Climate Exchange, according to CEO Dave Krog. Research shows that trees are very good at converting atmospheric carbon dioxide to a sequestered, stable form of carbon within the tree.
“We began collecting carbon credits from afforestation projects, or new tree plantings, in the fall of 2007,” Krog noted. “We have sold only about 17 percent of this first XFO pool, so owners can expect considerably larger payments as we complete sales later this year and early in 2009.”
Krog said that the forestry program was expanded earlier in 2008 when the Climate Exchange (CCX) approved protocols for sustainably managed “working forests.” That action has opened the carbon credits market to many other landowners. Aggregation of these credits is under way.
AgraGate collects credits from individual landowners and combines them into “pools” that can then be sold on the CCX. The company manages and administers the pools, registers projects, maintains the database of credits, interfaces with the CCX, manages the sales of the credits in the pools and distributes sales proceeds to participants.
Chicago Climate Exchange is North America’s only and the world’s first global marketplace for integrating voluntary legally binding emissions reductions with emissions trading and offsets for all six greenhouse gases. The CCX launched trading in December 2003. Member companies have voluntarily committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Though they must reduce actual emissions, they also can purchase carbon credits to offset a portion of their carbon dioxide reduction commitment.
AgraGate, a subsidiary of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, is the leading aggregator of carbon credits from agriculture. On behalf of farmers, ranchers and private forest owners, the company has marketed more than 3 million carbon credits from enrollments in 26 states on the CCX. For more information, call AgraGate at 866-633-6758, or visit www.agragate.com.
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Ken Benkstein, The Meyocks Group
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