A Carbon Footprint Is Definitely Paying Off

A Carbon Footprint Is Definitely Paying Off

By Chandler Van Voorhis

Landowners are on the forefront of an exciting new revolution—the dawn of “Natural Capitalism.”

For many years, landowners have become accustomed to receiving income when crops leave the field or timber leaves the gate. Value was always on a point of extraction. The carbon markets fundamentally changed things. Now value is about how we price the services that nature affords us. This, in turn, is pulling people into a new orbit of capitalism, creating a dynamic future for landowners.

Until carbon emerged in the mid- 1990s, when Carey Crane and I first got involved, a tree only had value when a chainsaw turned it into board feet or paper. With the rise of carbon, pricing the value of a tree in terms of storing carbon, we now have to ask ourselves, is the tree worth more up than down?

Since 2003, when we founded our company, GreenTrees based in The Plains, we’ve been focused on unleashing the power of nature through reforestation.

Over the last two decades we’ve created an aggregation reforestation model that’s become not only 99.6 percent of the reforestation carbon market in the U.S. but the largest of all forestry types. We’ve been able to achieve this by working with small landowners who, due to their size, would not be able to overcome the cost of verification nor the expertise needed. In essence, we’ve democratized the carbon market so the average landowner can participate. This is due to the power of aggregation and the power of one acre at a time, coupled with patience. While we started our efforts in the Mississippi Delta, where we have 600-plus landowners and 133,000 acres of hardwood reforestation that have generated nearly 6.3 million metric tons under the American Carbon Registry, we’re now expanded into Virginia and South Carolina. We’ll be planting in Virginia this year and welcome anyone interested in participating to reach out to us as the demand for carbon removal continues to grow.

This is evident by our recent distribution to landowners, the largest single distribution in the company’s history. What matters most is how those dollars are building equity in the landscape and lives of our landowner partners. Many are paying taxes, school tuitions, or making further property enhancements. Real dollars with real impacts.

And now, we look to the future. On August 8, we announced with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the owners of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), that we would conduct the first ever carbon removal auction in the world later this year.

We’re putting up 500,000 tons for auction. We’re tapping into companies and institutions from around the world to create a race to the top for landowners who are removing carbon from the atmosphere by planting trees. In the process, we’re standardizing the settlement process, educating the market, and creating price discovery.

These are truly exciting times and we stand ready to work with all landowners wanting to be on the front lines of a climate solution by the simple act of planting trees and creating forests where carbon, water, and wildlife values accrue over time for the benefit of future generations.

Chandler Van Voorhis is the co-founder and managing partner of GreenTrees. A recent podcast on the same subject from the Library of the NYSE can be found at https://www.ice.com/insights/conversations/ inside-the-ice-house.