Your offsets at work

The Doyon Forestry Project is offsetting the need for greater timber revenue across 215,000 acres spanning two counties in mountainous interior Alaska. Owned by Doyon, an Alaska Native corporation, shares cannot be bought or sold but are earned by birthright. Project revenue supports regional economic, cultural, and social programs by investing in community projects, scholarships, professional development, and land stewardship. The Doyon Project area surrounds Healy Lake and helps to protect the Volkmar and South Fork Goodpaster rivers from erosion and runoff that would occur if the forest were heavily harvested. The project encompasses a portion of the largest unimpacted boreal forest in the world; critical habitat for many Alaska species, including the Eskimo Curlew, an endangered bird that has not been spotted in over 55 years.

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Through a conservation easement with The Nature Conservancy, the Carroll Grasslands project protects the land in perpetuity from environmentally harmful agricultural practices. The addition of this property to the already-preserved adjacent public lands represents the conservation of one of the most intact grasslands on the continent. The property is home to robust wildlife populations, including the country’s largest populations of four songbirds: Sprague’s pipit, Baird’s sparrow, McCown’s longspur, and chestnut-collared longspur. Preventing of the conversion of grasslands to row-crop agriculture has significant climate implications. Soils that have supported grasslands for hundreds of years contain large amounts of carbon which is released when row-crop cultivation commences. Grassland-based emission reductions hold great promise as a tool to mitigate climate change but have been underutilized up to this point. The project preserves and conserves the soil carbon, belowground biomass, soil nitrogen, and carbon in surface vegetation. The result is an estimated 12,000 metric tons of CO2 annually. Additionally, ecosystem protection plays a vital role in protecting freshwater systems. The preserved grasslands filter the water before it flows into larger bodies of water. No synthetic fertilizers are permitted on the land during the project’s lifetime, helping reduce the presence of these fertilizers in waterways.

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The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) increased building energy efficiency across campus through a program of aggressive retro-commissioning and upgrades, reducing energy use by 27% across 40 buildings. UIUC also implemented renewable energy and LEED-certified buildings on campus. UIUC has a 5.87 MW solar PV system and has promoted the adoption of renewable energy in the community. Additionally, solar thermal panels provide hot water for the Activities and Recreation Center. The school also secured money for a biomass boiler that provides heat to greenhouses by burning the farm’s energy crop harvest to heat water. Other installments include retrofitting 118,567 inefficient light fixtures, an on-campus energy conservation incentive program, and the creation of 12 LEED buildings. By reducing UIUC’s dependence on nonrenewable energy sources, the school is taking major steps toward resource efficiency and mitigating the negative environmental impact of its growing student population. The estimated total emission reductions over the life of the project are 338,112 metric tons of CO2e.

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Frequented by photographers and nature lovers from around the world, the 18,000-acre Francis Beidler bird and wildlife sanctuary offers a beauty unsurpassed in the South Carolina low-country. It is the world’s largest virgin cypress-tupelo swamp forest, a pristine ecosystem of thousand-year-old trees. The sanctuary also boasts a plethora of wildlife. Because the property features stands of valuable timber, logging has been an attractive management option in the past. The largest remaining old-growth bottomland hardwood forest and the largest remaining virgin cypress-tupelo swamp were formerly part of the Santee Cypress Lumber Company holdings. In recent years, the Audubon Society placed a permanent conservation easement on 5,548 acres of the property, prohibiting future development and commercial harvesting. This easement initiated a forest carbon project to generate funds for the long-term maintenance of the area and protection of additional buffering lands.

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Shaan Seet is an improved forest management project on Prince of Wales Island in the Alaskan Panhandle, owned and managed by Shaan Seet, Inc. It includes higher elevation regions, recently deglaciated lands, wetlands, beach fringes and 7,000 acres of old-growth forest. The project will protect the land from development over the next 40 years and ensure continued environmental benefits through the preservation of old-growth sections of forestland. In addition to preservation, the project helps protect five different species of fish including sockeye salmon, coho salmon, chum salmon, pink salmon and steelhead trout.

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Middlebury Improved Forest Management Project is located on over 3,000 acres of mixed hardwood and conifer forest in the Green Mountains in central Vermont. By committing to maintain forest CO2 stocks above the regional common practice, the project will provide significant climate benefits through carbon sequestration. The project has allowed a permanent conservation easement to be placed on these lands, and this protection runs counter to how the project was managed in the early 1920s when it was logged to provide the lumber for Middlebury College campus buildings.

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Three cities in Massachusetts—Holyoke, Westfield, and West Springfield—have launched a joint Improved Forest Management project on ~17,000 acres of public forestland in central Massachusetts. Located in the Lower Connecticut River Valley, the properties are currently managed for watershed services, timber production, and recreation. The cities are challenged financially and are under pressure to generate increased revenue from their forests. The carbon project enables them to do so without resorting to more aggressive timber harvesting. The cities will achieve Forest Stewardship Council certification of their forests for the first time, helping further ensure long-term environmental and economic sustainability.

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Covering over 3,600 acres in northern New Jersey, Hudson Farm is one of the largest working forests in the state. Hudson Farm’s rich history spans over a century, and the property contains the iconic estate where the idea for the Appalachian Trail was conceived. Today, Hudson Farm pioneers wildlife conservation initiatives throughout the region and serves as a local community steward. Hudson Farm Foundation gives to local Sussex County charities including conservation and species protection projects, various medical causes, veterans, food banks, fire departments, and responsible hunting safety education and outreach. Hudson Farms partners with the National Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

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The AIM Environmental Group Inc. (AIM) Hamilton Central Composting Facility is an aerobic composting project located in Hamilton, Ontario. AIM focuses on converting organic residues from three municipal collection sites to quality compost product. All compost is processed using cutting-edge technology to develop methods for creating a high-quality and valuable product.​ The organic residues are treated aerobically to produce compost. In the absence of the project activity, the waste would have been discarded in landfills where it would undergo anaerobic decomposition, resulting in emissions of methane gas. The composting operations by AIM result in the avoidance of methane gas emissions from the decomposition of organic waste material in landfill sites. The AIM Hamilton project promotes sustainability by educating and engaging the community and encouraging best practices in reducing curbside waste streams. ​The estimated lifetime reductions from this project are 450,000 tCO2e.

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Net Zero Waste Inc. (NZW) is an aerobic composting project located in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The Project’s feedstock is mainly Source-separated Organics (SSOs) consisting of residential food and yard waste from Abbotsford’s 150,000 residents, as well as commercial and agricultural waste from surrounding regions. The Abbotsford Project provides a sustainable processing option for commercial and agricultural waste within the Fraser Valley Regional District and Greater Vancouver, BC. The Project Start-up was in January 2013, and the facility currently processes over 13,000 tonnes of organic waste per year. The Abbotsford Project produces valuable compost for public use, contributing to innovative and sustainable uses of waste, as well as diverting waste from landfills. The project avoids the emission of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The estimated lifetime reductions of the project are 335,000 tCO2e.

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