Pachama: How Much Should a Forest Carbon Credit Cost?

Thus begins a recent Pacama* article: "The IPCC’s recent AR6 Synthesis Report, published in March 2023, caught our attention. According to the study, of all the solutions available today to reduce net emissions by 2030, “reduced conversion of forests and other ecosystems” ranks second only to solar energy."

Pachama reinforces the IPCC indication that forest carbon credits would need to increase to US$ 100 - 200 per tonne. Here are some arguments:

- longevity, most trees live up to 100 years (some species thousands of years) before dying and releasing stored carbon back into the environment

- trees may be temporary, but forests are permanent and store carbon from the atmosphere for millenia and millions of years

- biodiversity increases the forest’s ability to remove and store carbon

- recent study indicated almost a billion hectares of degraded land worldwide is unsuitable for agriculture that, if restored through tree planting, could remove over 200 gigatons of carbon

- forest carbon credits have to be priced at a fair level to compete with (not cannibalize!) other land uses, like agriculture. And also to promote high quality projects

- Pachama’s own studies

Pachama also referes to a report by Credit Suisse that indicates that at a price of USD $50 per ton, many US farmers can break even from forest carbon credit revenue in 2 to 3 years. For EU farmers, that break-even point increases to 6 to 7 years (by the way, there is a very nice graph in the article, comparing forestry carbon credit revenue/ha with US farming revenue/ha for cow-calf, wheat, soybeans, cattle and fieldcrops).

Click at the image** below to read this elaborated article.

And here to recall "New Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)".

* from Quechua language, "Pacha" means universe, world, time, place, and "Mama" means mother, mother Earth. The startup was quoted in our Feb 2022 post "10 previsões de tecnologia climática para 2022"

** Complete picture from IPCC’s AR6 Synthesis Report available here (with zoom in/out option)

#forests

#carboncredits

#carboncreditmarkets