Carbon markets were developed to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions and their contribution to climate change. They can also help us economically value the benefits of healthy ecosystems like stabilizing the climate and providing clean water and diverse wildlife habitats. For years, the disconnect between the cost of developing forest carbon projects and the low price of carbon credits only allowed extremely large landowners with many thousands of acres of forest to benefit from carbon markets.
In 2023, LandYield teamed up with Finite Carbon, North America's leading developer and supplier of forest carbon offsets, on an ambitious project to expand access to the voluntary carbon market, starting with family forest owners in the 13 Southeastern U.S. states.
Leveraging its remote sensing, software expertise, and patented technology, Finite Carbon developed CORE Carbon®, an advanced, digital mapping platform that streamlines carbon project development for landowners with between 40 and 5,000 acres. The digital mapping tool provides instant estimates of how much revenue a landowner can potentially earn and then facilitates landowner enrollment in the carbon market and allows for on-going site management.
LandYield handles landowner outreach and education, helps guide landowners through the contracting process, then aggregates enrolled forests into cohorts to streamline validation and verification. Once issued through American Carbon Registry (ACR), LandYield transacts these high integrity carbon credits and issues quarterly payments to landowners. It is a unique collaboration that is opening carbon markets to a much wider range of landowners, and they have been responding. To date, LandYield and Finite Carbon have enrolled more than 80,000 acres of forestland in CORE across all 13 southern states.
I recently spoke with Carrie Gombos, Co-CEO of Finite Carbon, about the collaboration with LandYield and how our two companies came together to address the challenges preventing small scale landowners from benefiting from carbon markets.
Josh Fain: What sparked the idea for the Core Carbon platform?
Carrie Gombos: We began working on the idea behind CORE Carbon in 2020 with a goal of democratizing access to carbon markets. Small non-industrial landowners have never had the opportunity to be paid for the climate benefits of their forests because of the high costs and technical complexities of monitoring and verifying them. These lands represent roughly 39 percent of all forestland in the U.S.. Given this, we saw the large, untapped potential to both compensate landowners for the climate impact of their lands and, by aggregating smaller forests, drive substantial carbon reductions and removals.
Our history of working with the technology that underpins carbon project development and our experience developing methodologies positioned us well for this new type of project. However, in order to develop an effective, scalable program that would work for landowners while providing environmental benefits to communities, we first needed to do extensive work to prepare the platform. That meant developing accurate estimates of the carbon stocks and changes within all forests that might be enrolled to ensure that the offsets developed have a strong basis in science and policy. We also had to develop the technology infrastructure to allow the enrollment process to be quick and simple for landowners and make certain the offsets we were producing were real and credible.
In addition to our technological foundation, we knew we needed to ensure there was strong commercial backing in place so the program could scale. Providing landowners with frequent payments as they meet management obligations allows the carbon sequestration in enrolled lands to be environmentally positive and provide landowners and local communities with much needed economic incentives. This is where our collaboration with LandYield has been critically important.
JF: You and I have talked a lot about the combined strength of LandYield and Finite Carbon. Can you share how our collaboration works?
CG: Opening the voluntary carbon markets to this new population of landowners in a way that is sustainable over the long-term is ambitious. To do it successfully, we needed a strong partner to help address the financial and logistical challenges which have been barriers to landowner participation. We realized that combining the technology we’d built and our in-house project development know-how with the expertise of a company like LandYield, who brought their own forestry experience along with deep knowledge of carbon finance, would allow the platform to have the scale it needed to be successful.
The combined strength of LandYield and Finite Carbon provides landowners confidence that they’re working with industry experts on projects that will last for decades. On the other side of the equation, potential buyers of the credits generated by CORE Carbon can be confident that the credits are high integrity and underpinned by a rigorous methodology and verified by an independent third party.
The result is that our collaboration creates opportunities for many landowners that didn’t exist previously. Despite the amount of forestland in the U.S. owned by small landowners, fewer than one percent of them benefit from carbon markets. Our research has found that there are roughly 100 million acres in the Southeast alone that could benefit from our joint carbon program.
JF: Can you explain to us a bit more how the project development process works for these smaller tracts?
CG: When we started thinking through the project development process, we knew it was essential we addressed bringing down the cost of measurement and verification without sacrificing accuracy.
Those goals are at the heart of the CORE Carbon platform. To allow our team to effectively measure and monitor forest growth, the platform is built upon innovative remote sensing technology enabled by satellite imagery alongside long term forest data from the U.S. Forest Service. The information is then used to calculate the specific carbon dioxide emission reductions and removals which result from improved forest management (IFM) practices on a particular tract of land. We’re able to do this with a high degree of accuracy and a reduced amount of fieldwork. This combination makes enrolling smaller parcels of land feasible and much more economical.
The platform is the technology behind the scenes that allows the team at LandYield to accurately benchmark what eligible landowners may earn from enrolling in a project in real time. Finite then monitors the process once an agreement has been reached and LandYield compensates landowners once the requirements have been met.
JF: What is the methodology behind the projects? How are they used to calculate accurate baselines?
CG: At a high level, the program is for private, non-industrial forest owners who have between 40 to 5,000 acres of timber. To enroll, landowners must commit to a 20-year harvest deferral followed by a 20-year monitoring period. During the first 20 years, landowners will be paid quarterly for the additional carbon their forest sequesters and stores. During the second 20-year period, landowners may only harvest growth that exceeds the volume of wood they have committed to use to generate carbon credits.
This type of carbon offset project was developed under the ACR. The peer-reviewed methodology is called ‘Improved Forest Management on Small Non-Industrial Private Forestlands (SNIPFL)’. Finite Carbon is proud to have played a role in developing this methodology – the first ever designed with U.S. family landowners in mind.
The SNIPFL methodology enables efficient and rigorous quantification, while monitoring the verification of greenhouse gas emission reductions and removals generated by the landowners enrolled. It’s only upon verification by an accredited independent, 3rd party auditor that ACR issues offset credits onto its secure, transparent registry.
The big benefit of this methodology is that now smaller landowners can determine if the steady revenue they receive from enrolling their land is going to benefit them and their families more in the long run than harvesting the timber stocks. For some, this is solely a financial question that may be based on cash flows, for others it’s a balance of flexibility, conservation, and family values.
Carbon markets were not always accessible to owners of private family forests. However, landowners in the southeast United States with 40 to 5,000 acres of timberland can now take part in the LandYield carbon credit program. In return for a 40-year commitment, landowners receive regular income, expand the value of their timber, and help support the environment.
Learn more about LandYield and the powerful benefits of carbon credits — or get in touch and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.