this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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Finite Carbon, created in 2009 and bought by British multinational oil and gas giant BP in 2020, is responsible for more than a quarter of the US’s total carbon credits, which it says it generates from protecting more than 60 “high credibility, high integrity projects” across 1.6m hectares (4m acres).

However, experts at the offsets ratings agency Renoster and the non-profit CarbonPlan analyzed three projects accounting for almost half of Finite Carbon’s total credits, with an estimated market value of $334m, according to analysis by market intelligence company AlliedOffsets. Renoster found issues, including trees in a project in the Alaska Panhandle that were probably never in danger of being cut down in an already extensively logged area. Of the credits Renoster looked at, they found that about 79% should not have been issued.

Renoster, a company mostly used by prospective buyers of carbon credits to help them avoid those without real climate benefits, was commissioned by the non-profit newsroom SourceMaterial to examine Finite’s projects. CarbonPlan provided additional analysis.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

You don't need continual replanting - they have seeds, remember? A later seral stage forest has typically gone through the thinning phase, where the best trees out-compete the others and choke them out. Anything that germinates now needs to compete with the overstory.

As an aside, we can only really effectively use trees for sequestration in areas that were not productive forest before. That is, you can't clear cut a bunch of shit, disturb the soil, and make an oil sands project and hope to come out ahead in terms of emissions/sequestration lost (without even considering oil production emission). Reclamation can help you get back to where you were, maybe... But to out perform a natural system is a tall order.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

You don't need continual replanting - they have seeds, remember?

That's what I was implying with the bit about "trees accomplishing replanting themselves", but I can see how that's not clear.

Overall I super agree. My grad studies (put vaguely so I don't dox my ass) were the microbiological aspect of a project examining carbon cycling in various growth stages of forest. Some people shit on trees as a method of carbon sequestration but a healthy, diverse forest can really pack it in, especially in early to mid seral stages, and retain it long term.

Plus humans have deforested the hell out of so much of the planet, returning some of it to closer to its previous state has far reaching benefits beyond chipping away at climate change.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Some people shit on trees as a method of carbon sequestration but a healthy, diverse forest can really pack it in ...

That a probelm tho, esp when it's companies doing the planting ... because they plant harvestible, money-making trees (ie: jackpine) only. No spruce, other pine, poplar, oak or whatever else is indigenous to the area.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Agreed, but shitty, self-serving execution isn't a tree specific issue. It's a shitty capitalist company putting profit above preventing global catastrophe issue. Unless that's prevented, they'll do the same to every sequestration method possible.

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