This is a great summary of the status of forestry as a viable carbon market source. I suspect, based on the number of Ceres blogs on ClimateBiz.com, that the author attended the excellent Forestry and Carbon Offsets session at Ceres on Thursday, April 16th. We heard from a number of experts from all sides of the debate, including Conservation International, the State of California, carbon investors, and others.

I work for BeGreen, the carbon offset division of Green Mountain Energy, and I was fortunate enough to also attend the aforementioned session at Ceres. From a corporate perspective, we see the preference for forestry projects from clients rather frequently. Aside from the non-carbon benefits Ms. Barnes notes, forests hold an environmental mystique that will never be duplicated by energy efficiency projects or boiler replacements. Clients love the idea of offsetting their footprint by planting trees in their state, so their customers can see a tangible benefit from their sustainability strategy.

In fact, even as the session was in progress, I answered a question about our partnership with the Van Eck afforestation project. The Van Eck project, managed by the Pacific Forest Trust, is the only forestry project currently being traded on the CCAR registry. Consumers can purchase offsets from this high quality project for the first time ever from BeGreen by visiting www.begreennow.com/store.

Hopefully, as acceptance of forestry as a carbon sink grows, projects like Van Eck will multiply tenfold with all the credibility they deserve.

Sarah Smith
Environmental Affairs Specialist
BeGreen, a division of Green Mountain Energy
http://www.begreennow.com