at makes sure that they are quantified in a conservative, accurate manner. We also have to make sure that they are additional. That means that we’re not giving credit for something that would have taken place anyway. We also require that the reductions be permanent, which we define as 100 years.”
Lucas Clay, a master’s student in Clemson’s department of forestry and environmental conservation, discussed the potential for South Carolina forests to contribute to the California carbon market.
Clay said a significant number of South Carolina’s counties were comprised of more than 50 to 60 percent of forested lands, and the state’s total forested acres are just more than 13 million, or about 65 percent of its land.
Private owners hold 88 percent of the state’s forestlands — or about 11.3 million acres — and forestry contributes $17.5 billion annually to South Carolina income and provides support for almost 45,000 families.
“That’s the first indicator of the fact that South Carolina is a good place for the carbon market,” Clay said. “Forestry and timber production are extremely important to South Carolina. But at the same time, only 20 percent of the forest landowners are commercially harvesting tracts for production. So that leaves 80 percent of the 88 percent of private forested lands that are potentially not used for large-scale timber production.”
And that 80 percent of land that is not in timber production could potentially generate carbon market revenue.
Hunter Parks owns a farm in North Carolina, Mattamuskeet Ventures, that became the site of the first Avoided Conversion Carbon Offset Forestry project in the U.S., permanently dedicating a percentage of his land to continuous forest cover and generating carbon credits for doing so.
Parks, who is also founder and chairman of Green Assets Inc., a leading forest offset developer, said it is important for landowners to consider their intentions and future plans for their property before using it to enter the carbon market.
“I tell a client that their property is not fitted for this project a lot more than I say the opposite, that they are,” he said. “As a landowner, the worst thing I can do is get a landowner involved in this project that it doesn’t fit or won’t fit down the road. … There’s a lot of discussion around who does this and who pays this and how much does it cost. In this day and age, you absolutely need to hire a carbon offset developer to do one of these projects.”
Dawson echoed Parks’ sentiment that it was essential to hire a project developer in undertaking a carbon offset project.
“It is a very complicated process … and you want to be comfortable with whatever project developer you commit to,” he said. “And in our case, (the company that serves as) our forestry managers are involved in a lot of the inventory and that sort of stuff, and we wanted to be sure that they were up to speed and comfortable with the project. So, those are the sorts of considerations that we needed as an organization to be comfortable with before embarking on the project in the first place.”