The Pacific Carbon Trust, a provincial crown corporation established as part of B.C.'s Climate Action Plan, is examining the viability of developing forest-based carbon offsets.
The request for information will gauge interest in three silviculture projects that include fertilization, creating more forests and planting seedlings grown from superior seeds. The goal is to increase the number of trees and improve their volume and growth rates to make them more efficient in sequestering carbon.
Projects can be located on private land, including property held by local governments and First Nations, as well as Crown land managed under area-based tenures such as tree farm licences, woodlots and community forests.
A request for qualifications and proposals will follow later this year.
The trust chose forestation and use of superior seeds and fertilization for its first round of offset procurements because the results are more easily measured and verified. Additional forest-based projects are expected as more methods for quantifying carbon sequestration are developed.
Established last year, the Pacific Carbon Trust buys carbon offsets on behalf of the public sector and other clients who want to offset their greenhouse gas emissions to reach their carbon reduction goals. The trust expects to secure up to one million tonnes of offsets annually to meet B.C.'s greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Carbon offset standards set by the trust are already being applied. In late March, Vancouver's Helijet International Inc. (TSX:HJI) became the trust's first private-sector customer. The company announced that $1.37 of each passenger ticket will go to buy offsets from the trust. The program is projected to offset roughly 4,000 tonnes of carbon per year from the company's operations.
At the World Conference on Sport and the Environment, the organizing committee of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games said that, based on Pacific Carbon Trust standards, it will offset up to 300,000 tonnes of carbon generated from the Games.