BUSINESS OF FARMING
Carbon Credits What Are They Worth?
Carbon sequestration, carbon offsets, carbon neutral, carbon credits – all fashionable buzzwords currently in the news cycle. Rewind 10 or 15 years and the same terms were being tossed around just as readily until the carbon market dried up and carbon talk fizzled out in the media. So why do we keep revisiting carbon sequestration? What does it really mean? And, ultimately, what could it potentially be worth to a landowner? To understand carbon sequestration, we really need to explain the driving factor behind needing to capture carbon in the first place. Global warming, a 12
Cooperative Farming News
term you have inevitably heard a multitude of times, is the reason we are again focused on trying to find ways to store carbon. A very abbreviated explanation goes like this: Greenhouse gases (i.e., carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, etc.) that can trap heat in the atmosphere are emitted from various activities like use of fossil fuels, manufacturing and agriculture. When emissions increase over time due to increased activities in these processes that produce said gases, atmospheric temperatures will also experience a slight uptick. Left unchecked, baked Alaska won’t just be a dessert anymore. Slight exaggeration, but that’s the gist of it.
