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Agriculture and Forestry Projects as Greenhouse Gas Emission Offsets
Like projects in other sectors of the economy, project-based activities
in agriculture and forestry may be used to offset an entity's
emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
If a power plant wants to reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2)
emissions or reduce the climatic impact of its CO2 emissions,
it could do this in a number of ways. The power plant could directly
reduce its emissions through actions within its own facility,
such as energy efficiency improvements or fuel switching. As
an alternative or additional measure, it may be cost effective
for the power plant to invest in a forestry or agricultural
sequestration project to offset its CO2 emissions.
The power plant releases CO2;
the forestry or agricultural project could sequester (remove)
atmospheric CO2.
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CO2 and other GHGs remain in the atmosphere for decades to
centuries, and essentially become uniformly mixed in the global atmosphere
after being released. This means, from the vantage point of the global
atmosphere, the GHG benefits of a forestry or agricultural offset project
in one region can offset the climatic impact of GHG emissions from an
entirely different region.
The baseline, leakage
and duration issues may need to be addressed,
in order to ensure the forestry or agricultural project produces climate
benefits that can offset GHG emissions elsewhere (or be treated on an
approximately equivalent basis with permanently avoided emissions from
offset projects in other sectors).
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