|
Frequently Asked Questions
What is PowerTree Carbon Company?
PowerTree Carbon Company is a consortium launched in 2004 of 25 U.S. electric power companies committed to spending $3 million to establish seven bottomland hardwood reforestation projects in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.
Why was PowerTree Carbon Company formed?
PowerTree Carbon Company was formed as a voluntary effort to demonstrate the benefit of forest carbon sequestration as a means to address climate change while restoring wildlife habitat and enhancing water quality. Company members are learning how forestry projects are developed and implemented and will gain prospective carbon credits as well.
How many trees will be planted through PowerTree Carbon Company projects?
About 1.2 million trees.
What kinds of trees will be planted?
Sweet gum, bald cypress, tupelo, green ash, willow oak, overcup oak, cherrybark oak, nuttall oak, water oak, persimmon, native pecan, mayhaw, honey locust, sycamore, hackberry, winged elm, and cedar elm.
How does forest restoration affect climate change?
Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a prominent greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. Forest restoration establishes trees on otherwise unforested, usually agricultural lands, and by doing so creates “carbon sinks” to sequester, or store, carbon in the trees’ living plant tissue and in soils.
Forest carbon management opportunities are among the most economical ways to address CO2 emissions.
The technical potential for forest carbon sinks is great. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on the global level about 12-15 percent of total human-made carbon emissions could be managed through forestry activities per year on average over the next half century.
What are greenhouse gases?
Greenhouse gases (GHG) are components of the atmosphere that contribute to the greenhouse effect. Some greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere, while others result from human activities. Prominent greenhouse gases include water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide.
What is forest carbon sequestration and what are carbon sinks?
Trees sequester, or store, carbon in their living plant tissue. Trees are referred to as “carbon sinks” because through photosynthesis they build carbon “biomass” primarily using CO2, water and light. About one-half of a dry tree’s mass is carbon. In addition to the tree itself, carbon also exists in roots and in the soil.
How much carbon will the projects sequester?
The trees are expected to capture nearly 1.4 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere over the projects’ lifetime, typically 100 years.
Why are these power companies participating in PowerTree Carbon Company?
Some specific reasons that these companies have cited for participating in PowerTree Carbon Company include:
- the program demonstrates that a voluntary approach to managing greenhouse gases can provide significant environmental benefits;
- projects will produce other environmental benefits related to biodiversity and habitat, reduced erosion and soil compaction, improved water quality, and reduced flooding; and
- forest carbon projects like these are a relatively cost-effective carbon management tool;
- companies learn how forestry projects are developed and implemented;
- projects demonstrate the benefits of using offsets to address the climate change issue thereby providing options to nations and industries as they transition to a carbon constrained future.
- projects develop prospective carbon credits.
Why is restoration of the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley important?
The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley is perhaps this country’s most important watershed. Decades of flood control measures and conversion from forest to marginal farmland have resulted in an area today with less than 20 percent of its original 22 million acres of bottomland hardwoods.
No other watershed system in North America has suffered such a tremendous reduction in area. Much of the remaining forested area is highly fragmented with extremely poor water quality.
PowerTree Carbon Company’s work in the Lower Mississippi will help return these marginal agricultural lands to thriving ecosystems. Improvement in wildlife habitat will undoubtedly benefit a variety of species, including migratory birds and waterfowl, and threatened and endangered species, including the Louisiana black bear.
Why is forest management important to the electric utility industry?
There currently is no commercially available emission control technology to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil-fueled power plants. Forest carbon sequestration is a meaningful way for electric utilities to take action now to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration as a way to address the climate change issue. A ton of CO2 removed from the atmosphere is the same as a ton of CO2 removed from power plant emissions. Forest carbon sequestration project results have been publicly reported by electric utility companies since the inception of the U.S. Department of Energy 1605(b) voluntary greenhouse gas reporting process in the mid-1990s.
Why are electric power companies particularly interested in land management?
Companies in the electric power industry own large amounts of land in order to house and surround its current and future generation, transmission and distribution facilities. Because of this, the industry has a long history of involvement with traditional forest management and tree-planting programs, through preserving forest lands for recreational use and wildlife habitat, tree maintenance around power lines, education of homeowners on tree placement around power lines, and commercial forestry on electric company-owned lands.
What are the technical aspects of these PowerTree Carbon Company projects?
PowerTree Carbon Company considers carbon offsets, properly documented and monitored, as a major component of any domestic and international strategy to address greenhouse gas emissions.
The reforestation projects meet these technical criteria:
- Additionality - The LMAV once contained nearly 22 million acres of highly productive bottomland hardwoods. Due to decades of flood control measures, both good and bad, and conversion from forest to marginal farm land, today only about 4 million acres remain. The projects create a new carbon sink by restoring the original bottomland hardwood forest cover on marginal agricultural lands. Not only do the projects sequester additional carbon through the accumulation of above- and below-ground biomass, they also will eliminate fuel emissions from agricultural cultivation equipment and greenhouse gases associated with fertilizer use. Without PowerTree Carbon Company funding these reforestation projects, the land would continue to lie fallow or be maintained in farming for the foreseeable future.
- Leakage - These projects will not "leak." In other words, there will not be any impact on forestry or agricultural markets. The projects will supply no commercial forest products for furniture or paper or other markets, or, if they do, not for many decades; thus, these projects will not cause fewer planting of trees for commercial purposes. Regarding agricultural markets, there are millions of acres of other agricultural lands in the geographical area of the projects to continue to support agricultural demand. In addition, farming trends in the LMAV are for larger, more efficient farms with increasing productivity per acre due to improved plant breeding and equipment improvements. It is believed that the acres given up to reforestation are given up for the long term, and land elsewhere will not be converted from forest to annual cropland.
- Permanence - The duration of the projects typically is 100 years. Each project has mechanisms to ensure that the property and trees are protected in the long-term. In several projects, the land will be added to the public trust where it will remain in public ownership in perpetuity. Once the forest is established, it will be managed on a sustainable basis.
- Monitoring and Quantification - Monitoring and quantification follow peer-reviewed methods developed by Winrock International (link name tohttp://www.winrock.org/) to measure the above-ground, below-ground, and soil carbon pools, and consist of baseline soil carbon assessment in year 1; survival reports in years 1 and 3; and carbon measurement and quantification at 5 years and 10 years after planting.
How do the PowerTree Carbon Company and its members report results?
Results are reported annually to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), using the U.S. Department of Energy 1605(b) guidelines. EIA established a voluntary reporting system and data base as directed through the U.S. Congress' Energy Policy Act of 1992. Electric power companies have been the leading reporters of voluntary greenhouse gas management efforts since the system began.
Which companies are members of PowerTree Carbon Company?
American Electric Power Company, Inc.
Arizona Public Service Company
Cinergy Climate Change Investments, LLC
CIPSCO Investment Company (Ameren)
Conectiv Energy Holding Company
Detroit Edison Company
Diversified Lands LLC (Cleco)
Duke Energy Corporation
Entergy Arkansas, Inc.
Exelon Generation Company, LLC
First Energy Generation Corp.
Kansas City Power & Light
Oglethorpe Power Corporation
Oklahoma Gas & Electric
Peabody PowerTree Investments, LLC (Peabody Energy)
Progress Energy EnviroTree, Inc.
PNM Resources, Inc. (Public Service New Mexico)
PSEG Services Corporation
Reliant Resources, Inc.
Tennessee Valley Authority
TXU Generation Company LP
Virginia Electric & Power Company
We Energies
Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (Integrys)
Xcel Energy Ventures Inc.
Where are the projects and what are their sizes?
- Spanish Lake Project, near Alexandria and Natchitoches, Louisiana, 909 acres
- Walsh Lake Project, near Larto, Louisiana, 500 acres
- White River Project, near Newport, Arkansas, 1,100 acres
- Bayou Pierre Project, near Natchitoches, Louisiana., 500 acres
- Bayou Pierre II Project, near Natchitoches, Louisiana, 200 acres
- Bayou Bartholomew Project, near Mitchellville, Arkansas, 400 acres
- Southfresh Farms Project, near Belzoni, Mississippi, 200 acres
Who are the project developers?
- The Conservation Fund: Spanish Lake Project
- Old South Woodlands LLC: Walsh Lake Project
- Central Arkansas Resources Conservation and Development Council: White River Project
- The Nature Conservancy: Bayou Pierre Project
- The Conservation Fund: Bayou Pierre II Project
- Ducks Unlimited: Bayou Bartholomew Project
- The Carbon Fund: Southfresh Farms Project
|
