Air Support Colvilles Fight Carbon Dioxide By Developing Irrigated Tree Plantations

A revolution in air-pollution control is quietly taking root on an old ranch near Inchelium.

The 300-acre Hoffman property was cleared for farming a century ago. Now, the Colville Tribe has replanted the plot with ponderosa pine trees that over the next century will not only restore the forest, but inhale tons of carbon dioxide.

The knee-high trees, through photosynthesis, will convert the carbon dioxide into wood fiber.

An acre of managed loblolly pine grown in the Southeastern United States, for example, will contain about 143 metric tons of carbon after 35 years. That’s the equivalent of about 525 tons of carbon dioxide, one of several gases many scientists blame for an apparent warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Ten-year-old irrigated tree plantations in the Northwest may convert up to 330 metric tons of carbon dioxide per acre into 90 tons of carbon.

Locking up carbon dioxide in wood products is one of several processes referred to as carbon sequestration, or offset.

In 1997, international officials meeting in Kyoto, Japan, called for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent from 1990 levels. The target year for compliance is 2012.

Although the United States has not ratified that accord, President Clinton has committed the country to meeting the Kyoto guidelines.

A week ago, the administration issued a plan that would help bring the United States into compliance by crediting the nation for carbon dioxide trapped in trees and soils.

Some environmentalists object to sequestration. They want a direct reduction in emissions by industry.

But support for sequestration has been building since the early 1990s and Tim King, coordinator at the Upper Columbia Resource Conservation and Development Council, was on board early.

Resource Conservation and Development is a U.S. Department of Agriculture program. The Spokane-based Upper Columbia Council is sponsored by local and tribal governments in five northeast Washington counties.

In 1996, the council provided some of the money that enabled the Colvilles to replant the Hoffman ranch. Other contributions helped repair some of the damage caused by the 1991 Spokane-area firestorm.

So far, the council has helped 50 landowners replant about 5,000 acres using $1 million provided by two utilities - PacifiCorp and Tenaska.

Based on those efforts, in May the Spokane office was designated a Carbon Technology Transfer Center responsible for spreading the word about carbon sequestration.

King was put in charge.

The program, he said, is based on the purchase and sale of Carbon Emission Reduction Credits.

Landowners earn the credits by planting trees or practicing low- or no-till farming, which does not disturb carbon dioxide bound up in the soil.

Or, King said, credits could be issued to investors in plants that manufacture boards from grass and wheat straw.

He said the center will quantify the amount of carbon each project might capture. Landowners then sign contracts that require them to continue managing their lands in a way that keeps the carbon in place.

In the case of timber, for example, the credits extend 60 years, King said.

Once the contracts are signed, the credits are banked. The repository will be managed by CQuest Ltd. in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Chief Executive Officer Greg Lewis said each 1-ton credit receives a serial number. They are then deposited in an account controlled by the individual farmer or timber grower.

The accounts are not comingled, he said.

When a buyer comes forward, CQuest will put out a call for the required number of credits.

The owner may sell or hold onto the credits in the hope they will appreciate in value, Lewis said. “The farmer owns the credit, we don’t.”

To protect buyers, disposition of the credits is checked by satellites that, using infra-red technology, can measure plant growth.

There will also be ground checks, Lewis said.

“The buyers demand it,” he said. “They want to know there’s something happening.”

Lewis said that, like financial institutions, CQuest will keep a certain portion of credits in a reserve to meet commitments should results in some areas not meet projections.

King said the credits may also be insured and audited.

Lewis said experts still differ over how best to define and measure the credits.

CQuest is working on the problem with the National Soil Tilth Laboratory at Ames, Iowa, he said, but two or three other groups are developing their own methodologies.

“The science is just not complete,” he said.

Lewis said CQuest will use the most conservative measure. If subsequent on-site measurements indicate the land is producing more credits than expected, the owner can sell or bank those, he said.

Eventually, Lewis said, the federal government will probably set benchmarks.

The quality of the credit will have a lot to do with its value, he said.

Prices in the very thin existing market range from as much as $3.50 per ton to as little as 30 cents, he said, in large part based on quality.

Lewis said older credits are worth less because they were not as carefully measured, and because of another factor called additivity, which extends credits to landowners who made management decisions a few years ago knowing they might be rewarded later.

CQuest is gathering credits from a variety of sources, including IGF Insurance Co., The Rural Electric Coop System and Resource Conservation and Development councils.

Lewis compared the state of the market for carbon credits today to that for farm commodities 120 years ago. Putting in place standards for weight, storage and inspection took years, he said.

How fast the new market develops could ride on the outcome of this fall’s election, said Carlton Bartels, managing director for the Environmental Brokerage Services division of New York-based Cantor Fitzgerald.

If the new administration recognizes the value of such a system for the environment and landowners alike, he said, a market could be in place in less than a year.

Opposition will slow, but not stop, formation of the necessary exchanges, Bartels said.

He said forward-thinking companies, among them some of the major oil companies and utilities, already support the effort.

“They will move ahead a lot more forcibly than the government,” he said.

Last October, Cantor Fitzgerald brokered a sale of 2.8 million metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions between a consortium of 10 Canadian energy companies and IGF, the fourth-largest crop insurance company in the U.S.

And the company has traded sulphur dioxide emission allowances since 1992. Those trades allow the buyer to release a certain amount of the gas, a major cause of acid rain, into the atmosphere.

Bartels said the company handles about 100,000 tons in SO2 trades weekly.

By comparison, there could be millions of tons of carbon credits trading in a mature market, he said. “It’s a potential billion dollar-plus industry.”

Sean Clark, a policy analyst at Trexler and Assoc. Inc. in Portland, said the company has an active business in carbon reduction and sequestration, with $5 million in sales so far.

Prices vary widely, he said, because buyers and sellers have difficulty finding each other, and with few trades costs are high.

“You can’t buy a ton of carbon dioxide as easily as you can buy a ton of pork bellies,” he said.

Clark noted that the state of Oregon requires new power plants to meet carbon dioxide emission standards. To comply, project owners can contribute to the Oregon Climate Trust, which will contract for carbon sequestration projects or other means of reducing emissions.

The Klamath Cogeneration Project was first up, and paid $960,000 into the trust.

Executive Director Mike Burnett said the trust has solicited proposals for projects that would consume as much carbon dioxide as the Klamath plant produces.

Colville tribal forester Jim Erickson said many tribes in the region besides his own are anxious to participate in offset programs.

He said “it’s a good way to get lands back into production” with little of the bureaucratic dance that occurs when government funding is involved.

Erickson said program requirements that the trees not be cut for decades are not a problem for the Colvilles, who plan for a 120-year growth cycle.

“It meets a lot of cultural values,” he said. “I think you’re going to see a lot more people invest in it.”